Does your library encourage you to use and be involved with Wikipedia?

Wikipedia is actively trying to involve the cultural heritage sector with its Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museuems (GLAM) effort. A big part of this effort has been Wikipedian in Residence programs at organizations such as OCLC, the British Museum, the British Library, the US National Archives, the Smithsonian, etc (the full list is available here).

The work of a resident has included training staff on how to use Wikipedia as a reference source, edit articles, and upload content to the media commons, as well as guidance on how to enrich Wikipedia with links to content that libraries, museums and archives put online. There is also the opportunity to do more if you have new ideas for collaboration.

Does your institution encourage you to engage with the Wikipedia community? Does it actively discourage you from using/contributing to Wikipedia? Do you have any examples of things you have done with Wikipedia in the context of your work?

Ed Summers

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Comments

• Ashley Nunn: What do you wish to gain from this question? The part about "wishing your institution would encourage engaging with the Wikipedia community" makes this sound like a discussion. Are you looking to see what sorts of things people have done with Wikipedia interaction?
• Ed Summers: Yes, I'm curious to know if people in libraries have done any collaborative work w/ Wikipedia; or have opinions about doing it. I'll remove the 'wishing' part :-)

Answer by dsalo

The UW Digital Collections does what I understand quite a few other digital collections and archives do: try to seed appropriate Wikipedia pages with links to relevant collections or items.

Unfortunately, this doesn't always go smoothly; it's possible to have one's account frozen due to an accusation of spamming Wikipedia. I advise my lib-tech students to be circumspect!

That said, my understanding is that managing to place a good Wikipedia link does indeed increase traffic to digital collections.

Comments

• Ed Summers: Yes, the GLAM effort does provide some organizational cover for libraries to help position their content on Wikipedia. Seems like it might also be useful to have some tools to make sure efforts to do this aren't wasted.
• Ed Summers: I'm not sure if this is of interest, but it's possible to see what Wikipedia pages link to UW Digital Collections using the External Links Search It looks like there are currently 1,218 links, which is great!