Powerpoint used for a colloquium lecture at Rutgers School for Library and Information Science

1. IKIPEDIA &CULTURAL
HERITAGE INSTITUTIONS:
OPPORTUNITIES FOR
PARTNERSHIP
“Imagine a world in which every
single human being can freely
share in the sum of all knowledge”

3. WIKIPEDIA’S UNIQUENESS
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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

4. WHY SHOULD INSTITUTIONS
PARTNER WITH WIKIPEDIA?
• Demands for information met at the places where people
are seeking it
• Wikipedia is widely usedforcursory research
• Attracting new audiences to materials and catalogs.
• Review publicly available information on topics relevant
to your institution
• Put institutional materials in context

5. DIFFICULTIES FOR INSTITUTIONS
•
•
•
•
•
Losing control
Losing academic prestige, uniqueness
Rights management
Low reliability/quality
Experts don‟t want to „waste time‟ on
Wikipedia
• Wikipedia editing usability, technical training
needed

6. DIFFICULTIES FOR WIKIPEDIA
• Wikipedia is not a place for original research
• Entries must have a minimum notability
• Wikipedia is about reliability, not about
advertising institutions
• Desire to avoid promotional external links
• Frustration that institutions will not share
content

7. LET’S TOUR THE
COMMUNITY!

8. WHAT ORGANIZATIONS HAVE BENEFITED
FROM WIKIPEDIA-RELATED PROJECTS
•
•
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Museums, libraries, archives
Philanthropic foundations
Academic and professional schools and
societies:
•
For-profit companies***

9. U.S. GLAM-WIKI CONSORTIUM
• First 3 years
• WiRs in constant
communication, GLAMouts, listserv, resource
sharing
• Most events, meetups are posted on
Wikimedia, Meta Wiki
• Not funded by the Foundation
INTERNATIONAL GLAM-WIKI
• US Wikimedia Conference, Annual GLAM-Camp
• Some GLAM-Wiki organizations are
governmentally funded
• Global Wiki-Mania conference
• International resource sharing

10. HOW IS GLAM CONTENT
DEVELOPMENT UNIQUE?
• Adding links to online, digitized materials.
• Drawing from finding aids, archives, rare
books.
• Unique content which might not otherwise
be shared
• Question of where in the institution GLAM
fits best
• Encourages open access paradigms

11. SCIENCE AND HEALTH INSTITUTIONS
CONTRIBUTE TO WIKIPEDIA
• Most consulted health website in the world
• Encouraging open research
• Vast improvements in article quality, frequency of
update
• Setting goals: medical and health researchers
contributing to Wikipedia
• Wikipediansat Consumer Reports, National Institute
of Health

12. LIBRARIES: INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNOLOGY
AND WIKIPEDIA
• Instructional Librarianship
• Education Programming
• Consult with teachers Wikipedia lesson
• Help your community understand Wikipedia
• Open Access and open image movement
• Help community “not be afraid” to use Wikipedia as a
research tool.
• Opportunities for professional development

13. WIKIPEDIA AS A TOOL FOR
EDUCATORS
• Wikipedia Education Program
• Wikipedia Campus Ambassador Program

14. WIKIPEDIA IMPLEMENTED IN HISTORY OF
DESIGN AND DIGITAL MEDIA COURSES AT
CUNY COLLEGE OF STATEN ISLAND
• CUNY professor Michael Mandiberg:
• Asked students to upload freely licensed images
from Flickr to Wikimedia Commons
• Past students have contributed to Wikipedia
Illustrated
• Michael asked students to write Wikipedia articles
on designers and design principles
• Recruited a reference librarian at the College of
Staten Island to help with Wikipedia
• Organized a special “Wikipedia” tour of a Museum
of Modern Art exhibit.

15. WIKIPEDIAN IN
RESIDENCE
PROGRAM
• Serves as a liaison between the organization and Wikimedia
• Promotes understanding of Wikimedia policies and practices
• Works with organizational staff to digitize, compile, and organize
resources
• Coordinates events, such as Hack-a-Thons, Edit-a-Thons, or
Backstage Passes.
• Generally short-term: NARA just employed 1st permanent WiR

16. NARA HIRES 1ST PERMANENT WIKIPEDIAN IN
RESIDENCE
• Dominic, a Masters student in History and Archives
Management at Simmons College
• Releasing open access images, over 200 high
resolution Ansel Adams photos, JFK assassination
collection audio recordings, encouraging
transcriptions on Wikisource, adding content

17. HOW DOES ONE BECOME A
WIKIPEDIAN IN RESIDENCE?
• Strong experience editing Wikipedia content, Wikimedia
Commons, and utilizing other Wikis
• Editing experience in ‘non content development’ tasks
• Understanding of GLAM community structures
• Experience running trainings, holding workshops
• Interest in open access movement, open data
• Jobs are generally posted on the WiR page, twitter
• Jobs within Wikimedia Foundation: prominently
technical, fundraising.

18. MY WORK AT THE METROPOLITAN NEW
YORK LIBRARY COUNCIL
• Collaboration with Wikimedia NYC
• Project development: constant consultation with other
WiRs
• Consortium-based practice- utilizing existing networks
• Training oriented
• Consultations and staff trainings on editing and GLAM
• Encouraging workflow editing practices
• Follow and communicate updates in GLAM-Wiki

19. METRO ORGANIZED WIKIPEDIA EVENTS
• Edit a thons:
• Brooklyn Public Library Public Library, Central Info Commons
• Queens Library Central (Archives, backstage pass)
• NYPL Jefferson Market Library in Greenwich Village, Greenwich
Village Collection
• In my position, public libraries have been the most receptive to
Wikipedia programming. Reasons?
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METRO Workshops:
• (1) “Wikipedia for Libraries Archives, Museums”
• (2) “Advanced Wikipedia Workshop”
• Staff Trainings:
• Frick Art Reference Library
• Guggenheim Library and Archive
• Queens Library Central
• Brooklyn Public Library, Central Library
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Building METRO member-Wikipedia partnerships
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Write articles on member libraries, collections, and resources

20. “WIKIPEDIA TAKES BROOKLYN AT THE
BROOKLYN PUBLIC LIBRARY” ON SEPTEMBER
7TH
• BPL, Wikimedia NYC, METRO,
Wikiotics Foundation,
• Introduction and training
• Wikipedia Photo-hunt
• Tutorial on uploading images.
• 9 Wikipedians attended
• 17 new users were registered
• Wikimetrics
 5 pages created
 229 edits made
 73 images uploaded

21. EXAMPLE: COVERAGE OF BPL ON
WIKIPEDIA
• 13 External Links in
Wikipedia for
http://www.bklynpublic
library.org/
• 1786 page views for
BPL Wikipedia
article in last 30
days
• 175 page views for
Central Library in last
30 days
• 168 views for List of
Brooklyn Public
Library Branches in
last 30 days

22. NYC WIKIPEDIA ACTIVITY
Local GLAMs with strong Wikipedia
projects:
1. NYPL, NYPL Performing Arts
2. Queens Public Library
3. Center for Jewish History, Leo Baeck
Institute
4. MoMA
5. Metropolitan Museum
6. Brooklyn College
7. CUNY Graduate Center, CUNY system
8. Consumer Reports in Yonkers

23. FURTHER GLAMIDEAS: METROPOLITAN
MUSEUM AND WIKIPEDIA: WATSON LIBRARY
• Adding references to digitized materials
• Adding references to books in the collection
• Now, over 50% of the traffic going to the library's Digital
Collections is referred by Wikipedia.
• Pages views to the Watson Digital Collections website
has increased from over 5,000 a month to over 45,000
in the 30 days following their project to add links from
Wikipedia.
• Website averages 412 visitors per day, up from original
62.
• Remote collaboration

24. GLAM PAGES

25. WIKIPEDIA TOOLS

26. REMEMBER: WIKIPEDIA HAS ITS OWN
RULES
• Neutral Point of View
• Conflict of Interest: What does this mean for
institutions
• No paid editing
• Editors should treat each other with respect and
civility
• It offers free content that anyone can
use, edit, modify, or redistribute
• Wikipedia is a „community‟ of editors
• Governance- Administrators,

27. WIKIPEDIA TOOLS FOR LIBRARIANS
AND ARCHIVISTS
• Basics: Article
Traffic, Talk Pages,
• Templates
• Wikipedia Article
Assessment (AA)
• Infoboxes
• Authority Control
Tool/ bot
• Wiki RAMP Editor
• Wiki-Metrics Tool
• Issue Specific
WikiProjects

28. THE BASICS
Talk Pages:
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Communicate your potential biases, affiliations, concerns.
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Use talk pages when you plan to make a major change
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Post on a talk page requesting an article
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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
• Wikipedia article assessment work to create “feature articles”

29. INFOBOXES
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Pulled by Google, Dppedia, Search engines
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Persondata: metadata template added to the bottom of biographical
articles- pulled directly by Google (850,000 articles with person data)

30. AUTHORITY CONTROL TOOL
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Developed by Max Klein, Wikipedian at OCLC
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Automated, bot adding Authority Control Tags to articles
You can add these yourself
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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)

31. WIKI RAMP EDITOR: FROM FINDING AIDS
TO WIKI PAGES
• Released Oct, 2013

32. WIKI-METRICS TOOL
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Generate data on editing activities of groups “cohorts”
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Use for Edit-a-Thons, trainings, events to measure tangible
results
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Available data: Edits made, articles added, bytes added
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Can run for desired time frame, long term, short term

33. WIKI-PROJECTS
Editors gather and do things!
•GLAM Pages
•Wikipedia Loves Libraries
•WikiProject New York City
•Wiki Project Women‟s History

34. RECENT CHALLENGES
• GLAM-Wiki is still not incorporated into Wikimedia Foundation
• Funding for GLAM-Wiki Projects is still uncertain
• MIT study- there has been a recent drop in editors and
retainment
• Widely dispersed learning resources for beginners
• Visual Editor Debate
• Articles tend to have a Western focus
• 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

35. BIG PICTURE: WIKIPEDIA AND THE OPEN
ACCESS MOVEMENT
• Wikipedia lays the groundwork for future open data
releases, and open image sharing
• Institutions want to donate materials but are looking for
precedents among like institutions
• Encourages an ethic of sharing, open access to students
• Encouraging researchers to share their data with the
public
• Information stewardship model, over „private ownership‟
model

36. IKIPEDIA &CULTURAL
HERITAGE INSTITUTIONS:
OPPORTUNITIES FOR
PARTNERSHIP
“Imagine a world in which every
single human being can freely
share in the sum of all knowledge”
Dorothy Howard:
dhoward@metro.org