“edit Tango” booth at Library Fair&Forum 2025

The “edit Tango” booth was exhibited at the Library Fair&Forum 2025, held at Pacifico Yokohama in Yokohama, Japan, on October 22nd and 23rd, 2025.

What is the Library Fair&Forum?

The Library Fair&Forum is Japan’s largest library-themed trade fair, held every autumn at Pacifico Yokohama. Organizations and individuals from across Japan participate as exhibitors or visitors, and in 2025 the event attracted a total of 14,023 visitors over three days.

The majority of exhibitors and visitors are librarians from various public, university, school, and specialized institutions. However, various companies related to libraries, such as publishing and IT, are also prominent among the exhibitors. In addition, library and information science faculty and students, local government officials such as city hall staff, and general library users often set up booths for their organizations or tour the venue as visitors.

What is “edit Tango”?

In 2019, the citizens’ group “edit Tango” was launched. edit Tango’s activities aim to widely disseminate information resources about the Tango region of Kyoto Prefecture on the Internet and to spread awareness of its history and culture. The group also aims to deepen participants’ understanding of the region through their activities.

“edit Tango” has hosted a number of “Wikipedia Town” events, which build local archives on Wikipedia. Because Wikipedia requires the use of local materials from libraries as information sources when writing, Wikipedia and libraries actually go well together.

edit Tango booth

The Library Fair&Forum venue featured booths of various sizes, with corporate booths primarily located in the central area, while other organizations often occupy wall booths. The “edit Tango” booth was located in a wall booth, with five staff members luring visitors with a variety of exhibits and merchandise.

The booth displayed a timeline of the various events that “edit tango” has held since its formation, as well as flyers for events to be held in 2026. A display in the booth played a video introducing the group’s activities on repeat.

The main purpose of the “edit Tango” booth was to introduce the activities of the organization “edit Tango” and to introduce “Wikipedia Town” from the perspective of the local organizers, which could not be explained at the adjacent booth, “Wikimedia World“. We were able to introduce the region and our activities to many people living in the Tokyo metropolitan area, far from the Tango region, and several people from the Tango region who live in the Tokyo metropolitan area visited the booth.

As a new initiative, “edit Tango” began producing “Wiki town Cards,” trading cards using Wikipedia articles, which were distributed to visitors to the booth. Based on Wikipedia articles newly created or added to through “edit Tango” ‘s previous projects, each card features a summary of the article and related photos. Examples include “Komaneko“, “Barazushi“, and “Sodeshi Rice Terraces“. Taking advantage of Wikipedia’s unique ability to freely reuse text and photos, this initiative also serves as an easy-to-understand and engaging way to communicate the activities the group has accumulated to date.

Wikipedia editing experience workshop

On October 22nd, from 1:15pm to 2pm, edit Tango member Miyuki Date will be holding a workshop in the speakers’ corner of the venue, entitled “Getting Started with Wikipedia Editing with Children’s Books“. The workshop will cover everything from an introduction to Wikipedia to simple editing tasks, all within the limited 45-minute time frame that coincides with a high school class.

Lecture “Inquiry Learning and Wikipedia”

Also, on October 22nd, from 3:30pm to 5pm, Miyuki Date will be giving a lecture in the forum venue on the second floor entitled “Inquiry Learning and Wikipedia” and “Before and After of Wikipedia Town“. She will introduce examples of how Wikipedia is used in inquiry learning at high schools, and also introduce the efforts of edit Tango as a civic activity.