Richard McCoy discusses the use of wikis in graduate level coursework

Summary
Preservapedia intern Stephanie Byrd interviews Richard McCoy, principal of McCoy + Associates, on his use of Wiki-based assignments in graduate level coursework, WikiProject Public Art, and his experience with Wikipedia books.

The interview was recorded, by telephone, on July, 19, 2013 with permission to release the interview into the public domain. The interview is posted as a part of the WikiProject Preservation Education.

Interview transcription
Byrd: Hello everybody. Welcome to PreservapediaTalks. My name is Stephanie Byrd and today I'm talking with Richard McCoy, owner and principal of McCoy + Associates, where he is working primarily as a consultant to Columbus, Indiana, and he is also the co-founder of WikiProject Public Art. Thanks for being here, Richard.

McCoy: Thanks so much for having me, Stephanie. It's really great to be here.

Byrd: Just to start off, can you describe WikiProject Public Art for our listeners?

McCoy: WikiProject Public Art is a project that I came up with to help document public art, with really this crazy idea that we could do it all over the world for free using one of the top five most-viewed websites in the world: Wikipedia. So this is a project I developed with another teacher through a museum studies graduate program here in Indianapolis. We wanted to develop a way to teach students how to document public art, and it's very much looking right back at the late 1990's project Save Outdoor Sculpture. It's, sort of, a 21st century version of Save Outdoor Sculpture in that it's meant to be 100% volunteer driven.

Byrd: Can you talk a bit about what their student experience was in contributing to the WikiProject? What was their initial perception of the process, and how did it change throughout the coursework?

McCoy: I've used it now to teach, pretty intensely, with two classes and then I've done it with a tons of interns when I used to work at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, but I would say when we first got started with it, we had no idea what we were doing, which is how I think most people start most things, but with an openness and willingness to learn. So when we told the students that they would have to create Wikipedia articles about artworks, they didn't like it, and they, I say this jokingly, but I think they were considering a revolution in the class and throwing the two professors out. There's some students who never got over that, they really didn't like it, because it was hard having to learn a whole new thing - how to use Wikipedia, and how to document public art, and we didn't really have the expertise to guide them through the Wikipedia end of it, and so it was pretty hard. But, the second time around, we had all of that written down, and this is what really became WikiProject Public Art. We started working with Wikimedia Foundation, the folks that own and run Wikipedia, and got our act together. So now, through this pain and turmoil, there's all these resources within the project that will teach you how to make an article, and it guides you through in very much a step-by-step process. I think we very much saw the students as learning-along-the-way and then doing something for everyone, which in another way is a learning experience to show that you're part of a global community.

Byrd: What do you feel makes a successful article entry? What are your tips to being a top contributor to a project like this?

McCoy: It starts with research, and this is the great thing, I think, about the project, is that it's a way to advocate for artworks. In order to be a good writer and a good researcher, you have to know your subject, and then putting the information in Wikipedia isn't really any different, in the end, from using a complex Microsoft Word document. So what really makes a really great article is someone who's willing to go to their library at the university, or at their state, or at the city or county level and dig in and do some research, and that might mean also going back and finding newspaper articles because most public artworks, when they're installed, receive little fanfare, unless it's an extraordinary example. So, you really have to be a sleuth, and you have to dig some things out. I really think to be good at it, you have to be willing to do some research and get your hands dirty in a library.

Byrd: Let's talk about the format of the WikiProject because you do have the ability to create a separate Wiki from Wikipedia, so why did you choose the WikiProject format that adds content directly to Wikipedia?

McCoy: That's a really good question. At the time, there was, and there still is, all sorts of free software where you can create your own Wiki, there's pay software you can download, the same software that Wikipedia uses is all open source, and when we first started doing it with Wikipedia, some of the Wikipedians that were there said, "Hey, you shouldn't be doing this in Wikipedia, go start your own Wiki of public art," and I very much fought that and said, "No, no, listen. Notable artworks aren't well documented, people don't really know what they are," and so doing it in a highly visible spot like Wikipedia, to me, was the best solution, because then when someone Googles something close to what they're looking for, they're going to find the information, they're going to find it from their smart phone when they hit the Google app, so if we would've done that in a Wiki we created it never would've hit anywhere in Google. It was really our point to get the information as high as we can get in that search engine. At the same time, we also had all the students document their artworks with photography and they uploaded all of their images into free Flickr accounts. It's as if through the process, you create a collection. So now when you Google something like public art in Indianapolis, you're going to find the Art's Council, but you're also going to find a ton of Wikipedia articles about it. I think we've made a dent in the collective knowledge of the community.

Byrd: Is there also any kind of push to involve students as a way of getting their work published, rather than in standard academic papers and books?

McCoy: Certainly that was a big part of the idea when we started. I was always frustrated when I was an undergraduate and graduate, you would write these papers and they would go nowhere. Today, we have this capacity to collaborate globally, and so as we're increasing knowledge I just thought it was important to publish it, and so some students I do know really liked that. They put it up on their resume, like, "Here's a Wikipedia article I made." I don't know if that actually got folks jobs, but I said, in the end, even if you hated all of this, and none of this actually made any sense to you, in the end what you learned is how Wikipedia works, which in the 21st century is really important. When you go to look up anything, like your hometown, to understand that that article was written by people just like you is really important to understand about knowledge.

Byrd: I want to also talk a little bit about papers and books because you have experience with Wikipedia Books. Can you tell us about your work with Architecture and Art in Columbus, Indiana?

McCoy: The books function of Wikipedia is a bit geeky and not very well known, but there's actually a really powerful tool within Wikipedia where you can create a book on really any subject you want. So I've created a couple books, one for the collection of outdoor sculptures on the campus, here, of IUPUI (Indiana University-Pursue University Indianapolis) that all our students wrote, and then I also created another book that all my students wrote at the Indiana Statehouse. This book function is really extraordinary in that you can actually collect the articles and then it auto-formats it into an ok format, it's not very pretty, but it's ok, and then you send it off to a printer. You can either buy the thing in color or in black and white, they'll print it, and mail it back to you. They're not that cheap, I think they're about twelve dollars for a book, and so then you can make a guidebook for any collection of public art that's around you. The thing that I'm working on now down in Columbus is I'm starting to document some of the world-famous architecture that's down there. It's not very well published or very well researched in an academic way, and so I'm able to start chipping away at that through articles in Wikipedia. I have this longer-term goal to make a book about the art and architecture in Columbus, based on articles that I, and others, create, and have created, about Columbus. It can become this profound tool and an interesting way to shape knowledge.

Byrd: How do you feel projects like these affect the preservation field in general?

McCoy: I've given a lot of presentations about this to different folks, Museum Computer Network and the American Institute for Conservation and different organizations, and I don't know that I have a good answer for that. Everyone I've talked to about the project really likes it. You know, I had this foolish idea it was going to take off and all of a sudden all of these universities across the world would be doing this, and they would be documenting their outdoor sculptures at universities and cities and states, but, as it turns out, it takes specialists and experts to be able to write good articles, and a willing person to do that, for free, in Wikipedia, and so there's some pretty significant hurdles for more people to do it, but I've always felt like the first step in preservation is knowing what the thing is. So, I think that this, like Save Outdoor Sculpture, is a profound first step because it allows you to start with, "Oh! This thing is that, and it was made in 1923, and it's been here that long," so then you can, all of a sudden, begin to assess condition, like, "It's actually in really great condition," or it's not. It clearly checks off that first step in instances when things are not well published. For example, is the article about the statue of liberty going to be much better than the books that have been published about it? No, unlikely, but actually there's an article about the conservation of the Statue of Liberty that is pretty good, and so, I think it has great potential.

Byrd: Since you were talking about the need for specialists, is there a place for graduate level students in this kind of project?

McCoy: Oh, there's a huge place for graduate level students in this project. It's been one of my goals to try to convince other museum studies programs, other graduate programs in art conservation, other graduate programs in preservation and architectural conservation to do projects. Wikipedia no longer has the stigma it had, the big thing is that there were always these news reports: Tell your students not to use Wikipedia! Most people have gotten over that now, and they understand it's just an encyclopedia, and it is what it is, but getting professors who have never used Wikipedia to teach it is hard. There's work to be done there.

Byrd: Richard, thank you so much for being here, and I wish you the best of luck in continuing your WikiProject endeavors.

McCoy: Oh, well thanks so much. Thanks very much for having me on the podcast, I really appreciate it.

Byrd: And, for our listeners, if you would like to learn more about Preservapedia, please visit our site at preservapedia.org.