The Wikipedia Library is now well situated at the Wikimedia Foundation, where we have begun to focus on serving the community in even more scalable, targeted, global, and diverse ways. We are really running with the idea that TWL is a network of satellites that explore partnerships to improve Wikipedia's content quality through access to reliable sources. We are working with libraries, publishers, archives, and universities to connect a circle of research (access) and dissemination (discovery). As we establish this program, we are naturally thinking of other potential vectors for outreach, whether that is supporting cultural institutions (GLAMs), Wikipedians-in-Residence, Open Access initiatives, or other unexplored areas. Still, our core focus is definitely on more reliable sources for the best editors - and we are happy to report progress on that with four new partnerships!
For a succinct overview of TWL's last six months and next six months, please check out our WMF quarterly review slidedeck:
And if you haven't been following Wikimedia-l, TWL has joined up into the new (and large) Community Engagement department. This is a great development because it combines all of the expertise and connections of Community Advocacy, Community Liaisons, Grantmaking, Learning and Evaluation, and the Education program into a single, community-oriented department. TWL will report directly to head of the department Luis Villa, who came over from the WMF legal team with a strong background in internet law, open source tech, and a passion for building community. At the same time, we are proud of but sad about the departure of our trusted leader Anasuya Sengupta who is taking time away from WMF. She was very kind and supportive to TWL and we will miss her despite all of the excitement around our new team.
We're very pleased to announce the following updates about new and old partnerships:
Project Muse — Project MUSE has agreed to donate 200 accounts to the community, following our conversations with them at MLA. Their database of journal and e-books (title browse), mostly specializes in the social sciences/humanities. It offers full-text access to more than 550 peer-reviewed academic journals and 20,000 electronic books. Run by Johns Hopkins University in Maryland in the U.S., Project Muse has existed since 1993, and is one of the most robust academic databases available in North America. They have offered 200 accounts to Wikipedians; the signup page is here. However, TWL still needs an account coordinator for this partnership. Please contact Volunteer coordinator Nikkimaria if you are able to help get these useful accounts out to Wikimedia Community members.
DynaMed is a medical reference database. An EBSCO product, DynaMed is updated daily with curated collections of medical journal articles. They have generously donated the use of 300 of their accounts for our editors of health-related topics. User:Philg88 will be approving accounts at the signup page.
Royal Pharmaceutical Society - Focused on pharmaceuticals and related science, this partnership allows access to several journals well-regarded in the field. 100 accounts are available to experienced editors. Again, Philg88 will be approving accounts at the signup page.
Newspapers.com expansion — seeing a growing demand for the use of Newspapers.com from the Wikimedia community, and the increase in number of citations from the Wikimedia community to Newspapers.com, especially their open-access "Clippings", Newspapers.com has released an additional 100 accounts for Wikipedian use.
We need your help. Our happy problem is that TWL now has more partnerships than it has Wikipedians to manage the account delivery process. New partners Project MUSE and Women Writers Online currently are lacking coordinators. This role takes only 1-2 hours of work a week, and brings with it the satisfaction of connecting writers and researchers with the resources they need (and the occasional barnstar from happy recipients!). If you have benefited from a TWL account, consider giving back to the project by coordinating a partnership. Talk to our Head of Volunteer Coordinator, Nikkimaria if interested or just signup here.
TWL is pleased to welcome a new account coordinator: Juno! Juno describes their engagement with Wikipedia: "I started using Wikipedia when I was pretty young, learning about films; different producers, other movies that various actors had been in, new genres, etc. When I saw a few things off or knew of information that I could add I did so. I never intended to make more than a few small edits but the warmth and friendliness of the community drew me in. I still remember the first message that anyone ever sent to me on Wikipedia all these years later. I want to help build the greatest Encyclopedia ever written, and I think the best way to do that is by showing the same warmth and friendship that initially drew me in." We are very happy to have Juno on the TWL team, where they will be taking over managing the JSTOR approvals process.
AStinson is now a DPLACommunity Representative. He'll be working with the amazing folks at the United States' digital archive hub to better connect DPLA with Wikipedia.
Nikkimaria has been TWL's Head of Volunteer Coordination for many months, doing a wonderful job overseeing the onwiki signup process for free accounts. Now she is officially a WMF contractor where she will continue to do the same amazing job with even more capacity and involvement.
We want The Wikipedia Library to fulfill its vision of becoming an open research hub. For that to manifest, we need to be a welcoming and informative portal for folks from outside to get involved. We have created four new portal and guide pages targeting specific niches. Please check them out and improve them if you can!
Spotlight: Finding aids —a new guide and a new template for archivists[edit]
Archivists are information specialists with deep knowledge of their collections, and the topics covered by those collections. However, many have struggled to contribute to Wikipedia. For some, it is an issue of conflict of interest - they don't want to represent their institution badly by misunderstanding the rules. For others, it is a poor understanding of policies like SPAM and the external links guideline that lead to trouble. Others simply don't know the best place to start, and don't bother. But as those who have volunteered in the GLAM Wikimedia partnerships know well, archivists and their institutions can contribute amazing content and become valued parts of the Wikimedia movement. All that is needed is a few small hints, a bit of guidance.
TWL has started a guide for archivists contributing to Wikipedia. It primarily tries to answer a question often asked by archivists: how and where should I link to my institution's collections on Wikipedia? We encourage readers, especially those with archivist experience or familiarity with the field, to contribute to the guide. Curiously, among the English Wikipedia's plethora of citation templates, there is no template for an archive. We have started a draft for a "cite archive" template, but many details need to be settled. Again, if you have an interest, please participate.
Of course, we wouldn't be where we are without the growing support of the Wikimedia volunteer community. At Wikimania, the annual gathering of the community, we will be supporting you right back by hopefully sharing these provocative and useful sessions in the GLAM and Free Culture tracks. Please show your interest by signing your support for them.
The American Library Association's mid-year conference brought over 10,000 library professionals to a very cold Chicago. TWL presented again with OCLC on initiatives linking our editors and readers to OCLC's library services and members. While the presentation was sparsely attended, we will get a great video out of it for future promotion (coming soon). Even more rewarding were our conversations with folks in the Exhibition Hall. Exactly one year ago in Philadelphia, the dozens of publisher booths we walked past were strangers. Now more than half of them are our partners! It was amazing saying, "thank you" more than "please". Of course we approached even more new vendors for collaborations including Opinion Archives, IGI GLOBAL, IOP Publishing, American Psychological Association, World Bank, SPIE, AIP Publishing, E-libro (Spanish), and Tercer ESCALON (Spanish). Lastly, the mood around Wikipedia from every librarian we spoke to was resoundingly positive. It was so positive that we decided next ALA, which is in San Francisco this June, we will have our very own exhibit booth! It's time, and we are thrilled to have a space to mirrors our increasingly important role in the broader reference world.
MLA update
The Interior and Nikkimaria attended the Modern Language Association's 2015 conference, held in Vancouver, B.C. with the help of McFarland & Company. We were able to meet many publishers, and had several productive conversations. We met representatives of many publishers, including Project MUSE; this led to successful donation conversations after the conference due to the behind-the-scenes work by Alex Stinson. The conference had heavy representation by smaller—and mid-sized university presses—TWL is looking at different ways to partner with these institutions. The challenge here is delivery—many of these presses have expanding catalogues of electronic editions of their books, but lack a central conduit for distributing them and rely mostly on third-party vendors.
Upcoming conferences and meetings
In the next couple months, we will be attending several library conferences in order to discover new partner publisher and university partnerships, learn more from libraries and other allies about creating access for our users, and open up conversations with allies to further Wikimedia community collaborations. Here is where we are going:
GLAM-Wiki U.S. Consortium March 22-23 - Alex and Jake will be attending to consult with the U.S. GLAM community on Libraries outreach, and opportunities.
GLAMWiki 4/10-4/12 - Alex will be presenting the Wikipedia Library to the GLAM-Wiki community, talking about opportunities growing out of our networking with libraries and publishers, and encouraging the GLAM-Wiki community to engage with TWL programs.
DPLAFest April 17-18 - Jake and Alex will attend DPLAfest to give a workshop on opportunities for DPLA and its institutions to work with Wikipedia.
Advancing Research Communication and Scholarship - April 26-27 - Jake will be reaching out to research organizations about Wikipedia Library opportunities.
Project Muse Publishers Conference (April 28) - Jake will be attending the Project Muse publishers conference as a keynote speaker. The event brings together over 200 publishing organizations
The Wikipedia Library featured in the 2014 WMF annual report: [1]
The Wikipedia Library presented at WMF monthly metrics about improving quality: [2]
British Newspaper Archives features Wikipedian: [3]
Senior citizens learn to edit Wikipedia in the Czech Republic: Wikimedia Czech Republic describe their program titled “Senior Citizens Write Wikipedia”. The project is funded by an Individual Engagement Grant and works closely with Senior learning programs and public libraries. For the end of their grant, the team will be compiling best practices and lesson plans. For more information about the program's process and outcomes, see: Their Learning Patterns on Meta &Their Midpoint Report for the IEG
Art+Feminism- on March 7-8 the Art+Feminism group is supporting many dozens of editathons across the United States and Internationally. The editathons are being coordinated from Wikipedia:Meetup/ArtAndFeminism and resources for running events can be found at http://art.plusfeminism.org/
Newsworthy
Survey says 92% of instructors interested in teaching with Wikipedia again: [4]
Austrian Researchers: Resounding support for Open Access: [7]
British Medical Journal to publish peer reviews and authors’ responses for all research articles: [8]
CHORUS (Clearinghouse for the Open Research of the United States) announces four new members: Science (AAAS), PNAS, American Diabetes Association, and AAP-PSP: [9]
PeerJ launches new Open Access computer science journal: [10]
New recommendations outline ways to strengthen Europeana’s future relationship with Wikimedia: [13]
CrossRef introduces DOI Chronograph that can track traffic from Wikipedia to scholarly articles (Wikipedia is 8th highest web referrer!): [14][15]
AltMetrics has announced a new system to track links to academic articles from Wikipedia. Partly a result of Wikimedian Dario Taraborelli's work, the tool streamlines what was previously a laborious task.
The Wikipedia Library
