Education/Newsletter/July 2014/The Wikipedia Library
The Wikipedia Library
By Alex Stinson (The Wikipedia Library)
As a part of our core mission of The Wikipedia Library of providing Wikipedians with access to high-quality source materials, we have begun increasing conversations with partners in the library world to increase the access and impact of research collections on Wikipedia. We are expanding our outreach and discussions with a number of different libraries in the academic world through several different elements of The Wikipedia Library’s outreach tools. Here are some updates on a few of our education-related experiences.
- One of our early supporters in our efforts was OCLC. OCLC is supporting our conversations with academic libraries by helping build relationships. Moreover, they are actively developing software tools that help connect Wikipedia users and readers with larger library collections.
- We have developed two new models of activity with university libraries beyond the more traditional Wikipedian in Residence model of affiliation:
- First, several Wikipedians are participating in our Wikipedia Visiting Scholars program which allows Wikipedians to become research affiliates with the partnering institution. We are always looking for interested in libraries to help sponsor further, if you know anyone who might be interested, please let us know!
- Refining a model found in multiple published case studies, we created a resource page and education program course page for library interns editing Wikipedia to connect their collections with researchers. We plan to help supervise the interns with online ambassadors, through the education extension. We are currently in the process of recruiting the first set of libraries to sponsor interns, any recommendations are appreciated!
- We attended the American Library Association’s annual conference this year, sharing a table with OCLC. This networking opportunity allowed us to connect with university libraries and publishers. Expect to hear more soon!
Want to find out more about our outreach to university libraries, access to academic databases or other library-related outreach? Get our newsletter “Books and Bytes” at en:Wikipedia:TWL/Newsletter.