Wikipedia and Libraries

Bob Kosovsky, Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts

bobkosovsky@nypl.org | @kos2

Music Division - New York Public Library

International Association of Music LibrariesJuly 18, 2014

• Over 4.6 million articles in English Wikipedia• 287 Wikipedias by language• Over 30 million articles in all Wikipedias • 6th most-used website on Earth1

• 365 million readers worldwide• “Most popular reference work on the Internet”2

1 Alexa.com, accessed 11 July 20142 “Wikipedia” in Wikipedia, footnotes 5-9, accessed 11 July 2014

Editors of Wikipedia• As of November 2011, 31.7 million registered

users; 270,000 active any given month

For English Wikipedia (figures as of May 2014)

• 902,541 active Wikipedians• 3 million edits per month• 801 new articles per day

Source: http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm#wikipedians

Google’s Knowledge Graph uses data from Wikipedia

Even Birdopedia is derived in part from Wikipedia

http://www.birdingbirds.com/encyclopedia/

Wikipedia core content policies:• Neutral point of view• No original research• Verifiability

“Wikipedia intends to convey only knowledge that is already established and recognized. It must not present new information or original research. A claim that is likely to be challenged requires a reference to a reliable source.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability

“Verifiability, not truth”

“Among Wikipedia editors, this is often phrased as "verifiability, not truth" to express the idea that the readers, not the encyclopedia, are ultimately responsible for checking the truthfulness of the articles and making their own interpretations.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia

My user page

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kosboot

My talk page

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Kosboot

Grosse or Große? Discussion from the talk page

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gro%C3%9Fe_Fuge

Everything is a collaboration

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hands_4_Holding.jpg

Digital project: creating metadata for thousands of songs. I wanted to include performance information for the 1891 musical “Wang” by composer Woolson Morse.

http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/id?1153760

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_(musical)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woolson_Morse

Della Fox appeared in several musicals of the 1890s, including two composed by Woolson Morse

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Della_Fox

The universe of Linked Data: DBpedia (Wikipedia in data format) at the center

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lod-datasets_2010-09-22_colored.png

Authority record for Kellermann

http://lccn.loc.gov/no2013114694

VIAF record for Julian Klemczyński

Article on Julian Klemczyński

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Klemczy%C5%84ski

National Library of Australia’s “Ask a Librarian”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Darwin,_Northern_Territory

At least 270 Wikipedians who identify as librarians

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedian_librarians

1st level of engagement: adding external links

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patricia_Brooks

Multiple links (from the article on the Austrian National Library)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_National_Library

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Seeding_links_from_Wikipedia_to_BHL.pdf

2nd level: Expanding existing articles (An 8,000+ word article on M.I.T. but only a few words

on its five libraries

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_Institute_of_Technology

From the article on the Library of Congress

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_congress

Article creation: 1) on a library

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Public_Library_for_the_Performing_Arts

Article creation: 2) on a collection

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drexel_Collection

Article creation: 3) on a specific item

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drexel_4175

An orphan article

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banda_Sinf%C3%B3nica_da_Guarda_Nacional_Republicana

These articles link to Drexel 4175

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macbethhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Witchhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Johnson_(English_composer)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Eurovision/Assessment

Assessment of WikiProject Eurovision articles

Article on Drexel 4175

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drexel_4175

Wikimedia Commons

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Some of the many thousands of images from the National Archives and Records Administration (U.S.)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Media_from_the_National_Archives_and_Records_Administration_needing_categories_as_of_19_May_2014

GLAM = Galleries, Libraries, Archives & Museums

https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM

Wikipedia Loves Libraries

https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Libraries

“The mission of Wikimedia is to empower and engage people around the world to collaboratively collect and develop open educational content, and to disseminate it effectively and globally. We see libraries as our

https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Libraries

natural partners in this endeavor. Working together, we can promote scholarly and cultural knowledge, information literacy, and open access.”

“Catalogs are not the methods by which the community learns about things”

Katherine Reagan,

Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections,

Cornell University

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:INF3-129_War_Effort_It%27s_up_to_You_(Britannia)_Artist_Tom_Purvis.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:UserLogin&returnto=Special%3AWatchlist&type=signup&fromhttp=1

Behind the articles, Wikipedia is also a social network dedicated to a mission – don’t be shy asking for help

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Teahouse

The universe of Linked Data: DBpedia (Wikipedia in data format) at the center

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lod-datasets_2010-09-22_colored.png

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gullfoss_rainbow.JPG

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:We_Can_Edit.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:UserLogin&type=signup&campaign=loginCTA

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