THE PUBLIC LIBRARY AND

IKIPEDIA

Dorothy Howarddhoward@metro.orgUser: OR drohowa

Wikipedia for Libraries, Archives, Museums Guide

WIKIPEDIA’S PRINCIPAL FUNCTIONS:

• Fifth most visited web property worldwide

• Rare among the top 100 sites:

o volunteer-driven project (only other - archive.org)

o non-profit (only others - archive.org and BBC)

• Most widely read publication in history (?)

• Sophisticated decision-making model

• Anyone may participate

WHY SHOULD INSTITUTIONS PARTNER WITH WIKIPEDIA?

• Demands for information met at the places where people are seeking it.

• Attracting New Audiences to materials and catalogs.

• Reviews of publicly available information on relevant topics to your institution

• Editing Wikipedia gives cultural professionals the opportunity to put their institutional materials in context.

PROBLEMS/DIFFICULTIES FOR LIBRARIES

PROBLEMS/DIFFICULTIES FOR WIKIPEDIA

LIBRARIANS OFFER WIKIPEDIA RESOURCES

• Instructional Librarianship• Incorporate Wikipedia into Education

Programming• Communicate with the Wikipedia

community about editing practices• Open Access and open image resources• Help community “not be afraid” to use

Wikipedia as a research tool.

NYC WIKIPEDIA ACTIVITY

Local GLAMs working on Wikipedia 1. NYPL, NYPL Performing Arts2. Queens Public Library3. Center for Jewish History, Leo Baeck Institute 4. MoMA5. Frick Art Reference Library6. Metropolitan Museum7. Brooklyn College8. CUNY Graduate Center, CUNY system9. Consumer Reports in Yonkers

EDIT-A-THON: “WIKIPEDIA TAKES BROOKLYN AT THE BROOKLYN PUBLIC LIBRARY” ON SEPTEMBER 7TH

• BPL, Wikimedia NYC, METRO, Wikiotics Foundation,

• Start with basic introduction and training

• Photo-hunt: images of Brooklyn historic monuments and library branches.

• Tutorial on uploading images.

• 9 Wikipedians attended

• 17 new users were registered

• Wikimetrics 5 pages created 229 edits made 73 images uploaded

WIKIPEDIA AS A TOOL FOR EDUCATORS

• Wikipedia Education Program

• Campus Ambassador Program

WIKIPEDIAN IN RESIDENCE PROGRAM

• Serves as a liaison between the organization, the Wikimedia community, and communicates with other WiRs

• Promotes understanding of Wikimedia policies and practices

• Works with organizational staff to digitize, compile, and organize resources that can be shared with the Wikipedia community.

• Coordinates events, such as Hack-a-Thons, Edit-a-Thons, or Backstage Passes.

• Avoids Conflicts of Interest

• Funding Available from Foundation, Open Knowledge, Open GLAM

COVERAGE OF BPL ON WIKIPEDIA

• 13 External Links in Wikipedia for http://www.bklynpubliclibrary.org/

• 1786 page views for BPL Wikipedia article in last 30days

• 175 page views for Central Library in last 30 days

• 168 views for List of Brooklyn Public Library Branches in last 30 days

WAYS TO CONTRIBUTE FIND TABLE AT: HTTP://EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG/WIKI/WIKIPEDIA:WIKIPEDIA_FOR_LIBRARIES_ARCHIVES_MUSEUMS

WIKIPEDIA TOOLS FOR LIBRARIANS AND ARCHIVISTS

• Basics: Talk Pages, Article Traffic

• Templates

• Wikipedia Article Assessment (AA)

• Infoboxes

• Authority Control Tool/ bot

• Wiki RAMP Editor

• Wiki-Metrics Tool

• Issue Specific WikiProjects• Wikipedia Loves Libraries• WikiProject New York City• Wiki Project Women’s

History

THE BASICS

Talk Pages:

• Communicate your potential biases, affiliations, concerns.

• Use talk pages when you plan to make a major change

• Post on a talk page requesting an article

• Other users will communcate with you on your User: talk pages

You can check any article's traffic!

1. Click "View history"!

2. 2. Click "page view statistics"!

Other tools:

• Templates for just about anything

• Wikipedia article assessment work to create “feature articles” (well written, comprehensive, well-research, well- cited, neutral, stable, follows style guidelines, includes images and/or media, appropriate length.)

INFOBOXES

• Pulled by Google, Dppedia, Search engines

• Persondata: metadata template added to the bottom of biographical articles- pulled directly by Google (850,000 articles with person data)

AUTHORITY CONTROL TOOL

• Developed by Max Klein, Wikipedian at OCLC

• Automated, bot adding Authority Control Tags to articles

• You can add these yourself

• VIAF, LCCN, GND (German National Library), SELIBR (National Library of Sweden), SWD and GKD (pre GND), ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID), ULAN (Union List of Artist Names)

WIKI RAMP EDITOR: FROM FINDING AIDS TO WIKI PAGES

• Released Oct, 2013

WIKI-METRICS TOOL

• Generate data on editing activities of groups “cohorts”

• Use for Edit-a-Thons, trainings, events to measure tangible results

• Available data: Edits made, articles added, bytes added

• Can run for desired time frame, long term, short term

WIKI-PROJECTS

Editors gather and do things!•GLAM Pages•Wikipedia Loves Libraries•WikiProject New York City•Wiki Project Women’s History

RECENT CHALLENGES

• GLAM-Wiki is still not incorporated into Wikimedia Foundation

• MIT study- there has been a recent drop in editors and retainment

• Widely dispersed learning resources for beginners

• Visual Editor Debate

• Articles are Western focused

• Gender Gap, Multicultural Gap• Recent projects to recruit women• Edit-a-thons with Women’s History, Cultural History

focus• Emphasizing social impact of editing

• Looking Forward: NYC GLAM-Wiki Network

TEST YOUR HAND AT EDITING!

• Thorough research with citations.

• Go to Wikipedia:Wikipedia for Libraries, Archives, Museums

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_for_Libraries_Archives_Museums