In January 2024, the Subdirectorate-General for State Archives of the Ministry of Culture of Spain contacted Wikiesfera: They wanted to understand how to make visible in Wikipedia an important research they had carried out between 2020 and 2023. The project Women Investigators in the State Archives (1900-1970) is a pioneering initiative in Spanish archival, focused on highlighting the role of women in historical research. It brings together efforts from seven centers and offers access to documents that reveal the female contribution in history and science, and continues to expand, serving as a valuable resource and tribute to women researchers.

From Wikiesfera, we clearly saw that this project and the desire of the Ministry of Culture to make visible the biographies of so many women on Wikipedia aligned with our goal of reducing the gender gap in the free encyclopedia. In addition, of the importance of involving and training the personnel of the archives, a natural alliance with the documentation work of the Wikipedian community. For all this, we proposed to make a series of editatonas open to citizens in which anyone with an interest in the subject could participate, as well as companions of our community of editors and archive staff. For its part, the Ministry of Culture offered the spaces in which to carry out these meetings: the National Historical Archives in Madrid, the Archive of the Crown of Aragon in Barcelona, the Historical Archive of the Nobility in Toledo, among others.

As a result, in February 2024 we signed a Collaboration agreement with the Ministry of Culture to carry out cultural activities in the archives, centres and services attached to the Subdirectorate-General for State Archives. This is the first agreement of this kind that we have entered into for promote the enrichment, conservation and dissemination of Spanish bibliographic and documentary heritage, and it gives us great satisfaction to establish this important alliance that will have an impact on all the actors involved: public institutions, the publishing community, Wikimedia projects and the general public, who will have free access to this information.

> Illustrations

One of the big problems we face in making women visible on Wikipedia has to do with their images: the 20% of women's biographies that exist on Wikipedia, only a 20% has an image. Although with people who are alive it may be easier to get a royalty-free image, very few people release photos with a Wikipedia-compatible license (CC BY-SA).

In the project of Women Investigators in the State Archives (1900-1970) there are some cards with photographs of type card, but those images are not free of rights and can not be used once created their profiles in Wikipedia. Knowing this problem and the difficulty to achieve a change in that legal aspect in the web pages of Spanish institutions, we decided to carry out an experiment: We invite the illustrator Carla Berrocal (@pintamonas) to the face-to-face editors so that create the images of some of the researchers that we were going to publish. You have to keep in mind that, for those illustrations are valid and not deleted, can not be replicas of original photographs so as not to infringe the copyright.

Thanks to this idea, we had the opportunity to see how Carla was going. creating the illustrations of some of these researchers while in other tables the editors (new and experienced) were creating, translating and improving their Wikipedia articles. And thanks to your participation in this project already exist 10 illustrations They accompany the biographies of these researchers and are available in the Wikimedia Commons repository.

> Editions

Since February 2024, they have been developed 5 editatonas (3 face-to-face and 2 virtual), in which they have participated in total 76 people (95% of women). In these events, they have been published 86 new articles (41 created and 45 translated) and project information has been improved and incorporated into 24 articles. In addition, the project's own category has been created Women in the archives of Spain in which you can see all the articles we've worked on:

• 17 February 2024 Hewlett-Packard I Editatona of women researchers #17F | National Historical Archive (Madrid)
• 20 March 2024 Hewlett-Packard II Editatona of women researchers #20M (virtual)
• 13 April 2024 Hewlett-Packard III Editatona of women researchers #13A Archive of the Crown of Aragon (Barcelona)
• 8 May 2024 Hewlett-Packard IV Editatona of women researchers #8M (virtual)
• 21 September 2024 Hewlett-Packard V Editatona of women researchers #21S | General Archive of the Indies (Seville)

> Results

> Translations

In addition, thanks to the companions of Viquidones UPF (@ViquidonesUPF), are gone translating into Catalan profiles of some of the researchers that we have been creating in the different editing activities of this project, helping in the visibility of these profiles in the Viquipèdida.

> Gallery

> Collaborate