 My name is Jamie Flood. I am the 2022 recipient of the Paul Evan Peters Masters Fellowship. I'm a first year master's student in the School of Information Sciences, the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. I am also Senior Wikipedia and Outreach Coordinator at the National Agricultural Library, which we call NAL. NAL is the Library of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and supports internal scientific research, but is also open to the public. At the library, I primarily work with the Agricultural Law Information Partnership. Today I will be doing a brief question and answer with Kirsten Nelson, Senior Law Librarian and Executive Director of the Diversity and Inclusion Council at NAL about my work and projects. Hi, Jamie. Tell me about your background and what got you interested in the information field. I completed my undergraduate degree at Eastern Illinois University in sociology with minors in anthropology and women's studies. While I was there, I became interested in rural sociology, the food system and food access and systematic inequity. My mentors, Dr. Gary Foster and Dr. Jean Dearman, encouraged me to continue those pursuits, and I looked for a master's degree program in rural sociology and ended up at Auburn University in Alabama. While I was there, I worked with farmers who were growing satsuma, mandarin oranges, and one of the most significant issues that they faced was not having enough information about the fruit they were growing, as it was a new industry for many of them. They needed more research and knowledge to not only grow successfully, but to also make informed marketing and supply decisions. I was frustrated that they didn't have access to the information that they needed and ended up going on to work for the grocery business for several years, and around that time I started editing Wikipedia and realized what a valuable tool it can be specifically for accessing information. Research doesn't come easily to everyone, and I think having a website like Wikipedia that summarizes most anything and is free is extremely helpful. Have you heard of NAL before you started working here and what brought you to the library? I actually had heard of NAL. At Auburn, we had a dedicated college of agriculture librarian, and she introduced me to NAL's agricultural catalog while I was working on my research. I ended up moving to D.C. in April 2018 and was invited to an editathon, a Wikipedia editathon, at the library. My friend Ariel Citrone of Wikimedia D.C. had asked me to attend because my background is in agriculture, and I know how to edit. During that event, I wrote an article about Dr. Siobhan Ajik Abzian, the agricultural research service administrator at the time. And then that following October, they had another event that I attended, and Dr. Ajik Abzian gave the opening remarks and actually mentioned that her nephew had found her article. Ariel then made sure I got to meet her, and I also met Jill James and Paul Wester, the library director. Jill got my contact information and asked me if I wanted to come work at the library to help with their efforts to contribute to Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects to increase public access to NAL's collections and USDA research. I actually started at NAL in June of 2019. So why Wikipedia? I think Wikipedia is amazing. I completely realized that it's not infallible, but I think it's a great starting place. And the first result almost always when you do an internet search is from Wikipedia. It's a global place that anyone can access for free. It's an open platform, and I can write articles on there to improve representation and then give folks access to information and research they may not find otherwise. Both university and government research isn't always easy for non students and scholars to find, but you can give them access by editing Wikipedia and other sister platforms explaining research concepts and citing peer-reviewed journals. Folks then have access to that information that they may not have seen otherwise, and they're able to make more informed decisions and better understand topics and issues that they haven't seen or that they may be facing. Tell me about what you've worked on at NAL. So while I've been at NAL, we've worked on issues of land access, nutrition and food security, equitable food systems, invasive species, and food safety. I don't want research to live in a vacuum, and I want it to be available to the public and for legal and information professionals who may receive related questions and requests. Programming on these topics gives us the opportunity to bring together diverse experiences so we can discuss topics from a more broad perspective while also showcasing research and tools that folks can use to address these issues. What projects will you be working on over the next year at NAL, and what will you be working on at school, and is there any overlap? So in the coming year, we will be creating a digital exhibit or timeline on agricultural workers, including field workers, equipment operators, and line workers, like in meat processing. We will also have a speaker series highlighting agricultural workers and the issues they face, including climate change, working conditions, and legal matters. In addition, I want to have an edit-a-thon around forestry and agritourism, and during that event, we would discuss alternative land usage beyond farming to help families hold on to land and generate income. I want to discuss preserving land ownership for Black individuals and families. We will also have food and environmental justice and food sovereignty programming, focusing on Indigenous food ways, seed saving, and supporting alternative food systems in sustainable ways. Outside of NAL, but still kind of related, I'm working with two other Wikipedians in Indianapolis to form a Wikimedia user group for Indiana. I'm also working on a Wikipedia tool called ViewIt that will increase discoverability of images uploaded to Wikimedia Commons and that utilize structured data. For example, if you go to NAL's Wikipedia page and you have ViewIt installed, you can see a gallery of images of NAL and also from NAL's collection. Or say if you looked at Vincent Van Gogh's article, you can see a gallery of his artwork and other similar examples. Our vision with this tool is that it will help new editors find quality images to add to articles, mainly on non-English versions of Wikipedia, but it can be used across all Wikimedia platforms. And moreover, with this improved discoverability of images through our tool and across Wikipedia, we hope it will encourage contributing institutions to add more structured data to their uploads. I'm also working on documentation for Wikipedia that will go out to other institutions who want to edit and upload, trying to make it easier and demystifying editing in its related process, including uploading and utilizing Wikipedia for discovery. Finally, in regards to school, working on a profile of the Indiana University, Purdue University, Indianapolis campuses, Africana studies program for my African-American bibliography and librarianship class with Dr. Abdul Akalamat. Exploring their collection and getting to know their faculty has been very engaging. And this profile will include the program's history, archival information, and interviews with the faculty. That's great. Thank you so much for telling us about your work and your passion for agriculture and food law and for public accessibility and Wikipedia. I'm looking forward to seeing your work over the next year. Thanks so much for your help, Pearson. I appreciate you. You're welcome.