Wikipedia talk:The Wikipedia Library

Other questions for the list, on the editor access side

Answers to these likely depend somewhat on the agreements with resources who sign on to the project, but perhaps worth thinking about:

• How will eligibility of editors be defined, ie what does active/experienced mean in this context?
• If there aren't enough access slots for all who want them at any given time, is there potential for shares or rotations so that everyone working on articles in need of access is ensured a turn?
• How to design a system that doesn't take a lot of coordinator time to manually recruit editors to signup to fill slots, and then chase down people not using the resources to regain slots for reuse?

Siko (talk) 21:07, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

As to eligibility, I'd be in favour of a system in which the N most active editors (in good standing) in mainspace automatically gain access, to be revoked in case of abuse (like copyvio) or after a long period of inactivity (where both N and the period over which activity is measured are negotiable parameters).  --Lambiam 15:26, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

A few goals of the Library set-up, in my thinking would be: to make concrete, defined criteria and then let editors use them under good faith for a reasonable amount of time. For HighBeam, Questia, and Credo round 3, those criteria were a 1-year old account and 1000 edits on any Wikimedia project. That's a nice round number and seems to attract serious, active editors. The issue of revoking access is more complicated both politically and practically. It involves making tedious or controversial decisions about who is eligible after their initial sign-up. If possible, I'd like us to avoid having to make those kinds of decisions. It seems to me that a simple way to do so is simply have account access expire after a reasonable term (somewhere are 12 months seems right to me). And to also provide a simple mechanism for editors to relinquish an account if they are not active. We might combine that with a semi-automated approach that sends an editor a 'reminder' message every 2-3 months they have not signed in to the Wikipedia Library. That requires some technical investment that would be better to avoid if possible with clear up-front expectations for use and just general update/reminder messages that are not targeted at particular editors.

Developing an if-you-were-blocked or if-you-were-found-violating-copyright policy seems like it would be fairly contentious to design but also only minimally effective in terms of impact. Let's say we are bold and get access for 1000 editors up front and then 50 additional editors per year. How many editors with 1-year 1000-edit accounts, who are motivated to sign up for a 'free library pass' are going to be blocked or commit copyvios? First of all, those types of errors are sometimes made innocently and not a sign of a tarnished and tainted editor entirely. Blocks expire, and copyvios get fixed. I might sound slightly naive here, but I both assume and hope that the numbers of those types of situations anyway would be less than 5% (I'm really thinking more like 1-2%). So let's say 50 editors are showing some signs of inexperience or incompetence or worse.

My hunch is that the bigger problem is going to be the 30-60% of editors who just don't use The Library with any frequency. So, maybe you're right Lambiam that we should have an inactivity measure, but we don't want editors to feel forced to use The Library only encouraged and reminded that it's there. I'm just thinking out loud here. Thanks for the constructive feedback! Ocaasi ^{t | c} 10:47, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Here's a more concrete example, taken from the WP:Questia sign up:

Requirements

• You do not have free online access to Questia through your local library or university
• You have your preferences enabled to receive email messages on English Wikipedia; (see Special:Preferences)
• You have an account that is a minimum of 1 year old
• You have a minimum of 1000 edits to the encyclopedia
• Ideally, you are active in content generation, research, and/or verification work.

Expectations for use

• All editors are encouraged to apply where they have a need for background reading, research, verification, or content writing
• Editors should try out and use the Questia account during their free access period
• Editors should always provide original citation information, in addition to linking a Questia article, per WP:V and WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT
• Editors should not provide bare links to non-free Questia pages
• Editors should note "(subscription required)" in the citation, where appropriate

Your application suggests you've read this and will give it a fair shot :)

I think if paired with a quarterly update/reminder and an easy link to relinquish an account, we'll avoid most of the common problems here. Maybe that alone is sufficient and we don't need to overly complicate things... Ocaasi ^{t | c} 11:14, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Price

Well done, Ocassi. I like this very much. Out of curiosity, I'm very happy with both the accessibility and choice my local university library offers its students. Do you know what a good university pays per year per student for online journal access? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 18:08, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Contacting procedure!

Can someone (Ocaasi?) tell me how are you approaching these sites? Are you contacting via email/phone etc? And can you add this site https://www.library.britishcouncil.org.in/ in the list? --Tito Dutta (talk) 15:53, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

I contact them any way I can. Initially I usually go through their customer service/sales department and have them put me in touch with the right person. If I know a contact by name I will email or call them directly. I can contact British Council. Do you have any idea how many accounts we would want? 10? 50? 100? 1000?Ocaasi ^{t | c} 19:17, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Not directly related but, many times I tried contacting some websites and person (mostly Indian for image license permission, but never heard back anything. Only one person replied back. He asked some ₹1,000 (US$12) for 1 image of a Bengali celebrity (BLP). I did not pay (or contact back). :weep: :weep: I generally email from my gmail.com email. If possible, can you create a tutorial page on "approaching sites for Wikipedia Library" etc

About British Council, I don't know about their online storage, but, they are one of the best libraries of India. In their home page they say they have 70,000 books, if they really have it and they give us 200 accounts, it will be excellent! --Tito Dutta (talk) 12:38, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Free Wikipedia editor access to NTRL / NTIS? (reposted)

(Bringing this discussion over from the Helpdesk..)

Is there any reasonable method for a Wikipedia hobbyist editor to get continual free access to the otherwise pay-per-document United States federal information resources of NTIS / NTRL?

• National Technical Information Service -- http://www.ntis.gov/

• National Technical Reports Library -- http://www.ntis.gov/products/ntrl.aspx

They want either $3000 a year for non-profit access, or about $15 per electronic document retrieved. I want to use high quality citations in the technical Wikipedia articles I edit, but I am not so "dedicated" as being willing to fork out that kind of cash, simply looking for possible article citations.

I live out in the middle of rural nowhere in Wisconsin, so there aren't any big colleges or metro public libraries that might possibly be nearby that are paying for document access.

And I can't really pass this research work on to someone else who does have access, as I'm doing general topic searches which may yield hundreds of documents to download and look through.

-- DMahalko (talk) 15:54, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

I'll look into this. Can you give me a better idea of how these are useful sources and what areas on Wikipedia they'd be most helpful in? Ocaasi ^{t | c} 17:24, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

It looks like they may be able to provide access to technical citations for obscure extreme-tech topics. I see there is a "free trial" offer. I should probably just sign up with it and see what turns up in searches.

This started with my recent posting at Talk:Powered exoskeleton ...

US Military cite hunting at Defense Technical Information Center I know that extreme-tech topics like this can be really difficult to cite. But I have discovered a solution tonight. To find some of the really obscure technical articles for this subject matter from the US Military research programs, go here: United States Defense Technical Information Center -- http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/ 1. HARDIMAN --- 146 document search results 2. POWERED EXOSKELETON --- 334 document search results I am sure there is much more here that may be useful, but the difficulty is finding the correct technical search terms to describe exactly what you're looking for. The only big downside is that some of the old scanned documents from the 1960s are basically fax quality and the original grayscale images just did not transfer and look horrible.

So I tried contacting DTIC to see if they have any options for getting better image quality rescans of these old technical documents. They directed me to try NTIS:

Defense Technical Information Center -- http://www.dtic.mil -- Ask A Librarian DTIC has received your question and will answer shortly. [Question]: Is it possible for nonmilitary users of DTIC to request higher quality / grayscale / color rescans of DTIC original documents? For example take a look at the images in this PDF. They are extremely low quality, nearly useless. The original document was likely grayscale and looked much better: HARDIMAN I ARM TEST - HARDIMAN I PROTOTYPE PROJECT - Dec 31, 1969 http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/701359.pdf Reason for research: It's complicated. I am a nonmilitary technology hobbyist Wikipedia editor in Wisconsin, researching the "powered exoskeleton", to better cite the Wikipedia article for this obscure and highly technical topic, and to perhaps enhance the knowledge of people around the world seeking to learn about this topic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powered_exoskeleton There is no rush on a response, and nobody needs to call me. Email is fine for a response.

Sir, It is highly unlikely that the original 1969 document was in greyscale. Consider the date. At that time, these reports were converted to microfiche or microfilm and the paper copies destroyed. With millions of reports being produced, there is no way the DTIC or any other government agency could have stored paper. DTIC made it's digital version from the microfiche or microfilm. We always use the best copy available. If, however, you want to get the microfiche, it may be available from the National Technical Information Service ( http://www.ntis.gov ), the government organization that is responsible for providing the public with such documents. DTIC's charter is to provide documents to the Military and other government agencies. As a courtesy, we post unclassified, unlimited documents for public use. Best Regards, The Reference Team at the Defense Technical Information Center, Ft. Belvoir, VA Phone: (703) 767-8265; DSN 427-8265

But if finding a free access route for NTIS access is a huge hassle then I will try to just go with what I'm able to find from DTIC's no-frills, no-support, free public documents access. -- DMahalko (talk) 01:30, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

The difference between NTRL & the free NTIS is that NTRL includes full-text access to the documents they have scanned -- which is by no means all of the documents. (For the ones they haven't scanned, there's still a charge). The records in each database should be the same. My advice would be to use NTIS & DOE's Information Bridge. to find the reports you want, then get in touch with a local university library. Also, you can contact me directly; I can let you know if there's a digitized copy in NTRL. The database is a great resource for technical research but most of the documents are obscure enough -- with limited use cases for article use -- that I'm not sure it's a great use of money to try and get Wikipedian access. (I have some experience with this, as I'm an engineering librarian and I work a lot with tech reports -- feel free to use me as a tech reports contact). -- phoebe / (talk to me) 17:06, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

The search box is now here (it moved, which is confusing; let me know if that doesn't work for you as a non-subscriber), and let me know if you want a search run for you in NTRL, and also do try [1] -- phoebe / (talk to me) 17:20, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

New source?

I came across http://www.infomart.com/ at the very bottom right of the Edmonton Journal website as their storage database: http://www.edmontonjournal.com/index.html . Is it worth adding an acount for? I haven't looked into cost but they did wish us a happy birthday on their site yesterday.--Canoe1967 (talk) 23:18, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I think infomart is the content licensor for Edmonton Journal, but even that is speculative. Infomart appears to mainly be an analytics company that does some relicensing as well. More information is here: http://www.infomart.com/content-licensing/. The one strength they offer is a focus on Canadian sources which I wouldn't be surprised if other databases relatively lack. I'm not quite sure it's a top target as a research database or an organization that would be likely to partner with us as a donor, but no harm in looking into it. Cheers,Ocaasi ^{t | c} 02:35, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Ok. I will leave it in your hands then. I think most majour(sic) cities in Canada only have two main papers, a newspaper and a rag. In Edmonton they are the Journal and the Sun. You will note that the Sun has a sports picture covering most the front page almost every day and only a one page business section, so I will let you decide which is the rag.

Resolved

--Canoe1967 (talk) 02:45, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

How to sign up?

As an editor for over seven years, with over 75,000 edits, I'd be interested in signing up for this. I didn't see a link to a registration form or anything like that on the article page. Could someone tell me the process? Thanks! --Tenebrae (talk) 21:08, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi Tenebrae. Right now you can only sign up for the individual sites listed in the box at the top of WP:TWL. The only one with available accounts right now is WP:Questia. Cheers, Ocaasi ^{t | c} 23:13, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Also, a thought

Since these resources are behind a pay wall, I think it behooves us to encourage or even make it a guideline that when citing such sources we use the citation templates' "quote" field and add the specific sentence that supports the footnoted addition. I've seen, far too many times, citations that, upon examination of the cited source, have nothing to do with the claim being made. Sometimes it's an editor simply misreading the source, and sometimes a separate editor adds something uncited within a footnoted passage, but more times than you'd imagine the source makes no mention at all that supports the claim. Having the actual sentence that supports the claim would be reassuring to those who can't afford to go to the pay-wall article. Because after all, one of the key tenets of Wikipedia is that it's an altruistic, free encyclopedia. --Tenebrae (talk) 21:14, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm curious how you think WP:PAYWALL handles this, and if it's something we can enforce or should just recommend. Consensus seems to be that any reliable source, even paywalled, is better than no reliable source--but using the quote field may not be a bad idea. I'm curious what others think. Ocaasi ^{t | c} 23:15, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi, Ocaasi, and thank you for spearheading what sounds like an exciting and incredibly useful project. In answer to your question, WP:PAYWALL says as long as sources are available, the ease of availability doesn't matter. As more and more sites go to pay models, however — The Times of London being but one prominent example — many of the non-affluent people and emerging nations who could benefit most from Wikipedia, and who in many cases have access to libraries or other free institutions that can do interlibrary loans, will not be able to check sources simply because they cannot afford to. This seems to go against the core spirit of Wikipedia. Inserting the confirming quote (in the good-faith assumption that editors will do so honestly and not fudge quotes) may be a painless way to avoid such a haves / have-nots situation. I'm with you in being curious what others think. With thanks and regards, --Tenebrae (talk) 00:22, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Individual Engagement Grant proposal

The Wikipedia Library is currently up for an individual engagement grant here: m:Grants:IEG/The_Wikipedia_Library. Please share your thoughts. Ocaasi ^{t | c} 21:13, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Status?

I saw this mentioned recently for the first time in a while, and just wondered what the status of it is. Can anyone offer an update? SlimVirgin ^(talk) 21:06, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi Slim, sorry for the delay in responding. Credo accounts (500) are all used up and there is not an intention for future donations at this time. HighBeam's 1000 accounts are all used up and new accounts are currently being sought. Questia has several hundred accounts left still and signups are ongoing. JSTOR is maxed out with 100 donations, but there's hope to expand that program. The IEG grant was accepted for this spring and June through November will focus on expanding the Library offerings and management of the accounts. Cheers, Ocaasi ^{t | c} 22:28, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

re: sign-on access

Hi Ocaasi and everyone else,

I saw the note in the Signpost -- congrats on the grant -- and also I saw that you're considering authentication methods. I think it would actually be far easier to set up our own system than piggyback on a university system. Our university library for instance authenticates straight from the database of students, staff & faculty maintained by the central student people, and I don't have the faintest idea how you would tap into that -- I think it would be very difficult to add random folks. Not to mention, every license agreement we sign limits our stuff to "students, faculty & staff of UCD"; and, it's an all or nothing proposition -- if you're authenticated, you're authenticated for the whole massive library. AFAIK, most universities (in the US at least) work like this.

But, I do have advice for getting advice on how to set up a sign-on system, which is that you contact the friendly folks at Code4Lib -- several have worked with the Wikipedia API, and people may have good ideas about how to go about it. You might even find someone willing to work on the project. [2] cheers, -- phoebe / (talk to me) 17:15, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Agree with Phoebe about the difficulty of piggy-backing, I talked to one of our IT people, and it's much the same deal, not really any options for integrating a limited, outside user group into the access. The Interior (Talk) 23:26, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Resource guides at TWL

With the idea of widening the scope of the Wikipedia Library a bit, I've started a draft page (Wikipedia talk:The Wikipedia Library/Resources) to start collating free-of-charge web resources, as well as useful database indexes to help with source searches. The idea is that eventually, we can make some good topic-based "resource guide" type pages for the library. The active wikiprojects will probably have some good input on this. Thoughts? The Interior (Talk) 23:22, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Whoah, just found this, helps us along a bit: Wikipedia:Public domain resources The Interior (Talk) 00:33, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

O'Reilly books for free

A small collection at the moment, some of these free resources have been available for a while: http://oreilly.com/openbook/ . Enjoy. --Lexein (talk) 05:21, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia citation counts in impact factors?

Are citation counts from WP articles included in any impact factors or altmetrics (yet)? If they are, this will be a "What's in it for publishers". Publishers would presumably be more keen on providing access to Wpedians if they know that resulting citations are likely to improve the impact ranking of their journals. Nurg (talk) 23:05, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Big new free source

Hey all, dropping a note here for FA writers and reviewers... the University of California system, one of the largest higher ed. systems in the U.S. if not the world, recently announced they're going to publish all peer-reviewed work by UC under open access policies. Books and journals will be available for reading in full at http://www.escholarship.org/. Steven Walling • talk 20:22, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

• Good news. --Tito☸Dutta 23:39, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

JSTOR access for Cambridge grads

Please see note at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)#Message to all cambridge graduates about JSTOR access. Cheers. 64.40.54.177 (talk) 03:48, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

Come and join The Wikipedia Library

The Wikipedia Library is an open research hub, a place for organizing our amazing community of research and reference experts to collaborate and help improve the encyclopedia.

We are working together towards 5 big goals:

Connect editors with their local library and freely accessible resources

Partner to provide free access to paywalled publications, databases, universities, and libraries

Build relationships among our community of editors, libraries, and librarians

Facilitate research for Wikipedians, helping editors to find and use sources

Promote broader open access in publishing and research

Sign up to receive announcements and news about resource donations and partnerships: Sign up
Come and create your profile, and see how we can leverage your talent, expertise, and dedication: Join in

Introduce yourself  :-)

-Hope to see you there, Ocaasi ^{t | c} 14:59, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Making contact

I like the way the page is developing, very much. If someone who is not a Wikipedian but a member of a research publication organisation but wants to help us out, or talk to somebody about it, what should they be directed to do? Bear in mind that it might be someone non-technical so on-wiki discussion might not be convenient for them. Would it be good to have a shared email box? Or for a few people to publish their email address/ Skype names? Somebody running an archive might have an impulse to work with us, but unless it's easy to get in touch and talk with someone they might not get around to it. MartinPoulter (talk) 15:47, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Great idea, Martin. New contact email: wikipedialibrarygmail.com. I'll put that somewhere on the main page. Also, we have a twitter: @WikiLibrary. I'll add that too. And Facebook. Cheers, Ocaasi ^{t | c} 16:53, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

/Resources subpage

The Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library/Resources page doesn't seem to be linked from the main page. 64.40.54.143 (talk) 04:42, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

It's item #3 under Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library#Research Resources. ;) –Quiddity (talk) 04:53, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Hiding right in front of me. My mistake. 64.40.54.143 (talk) 05:41, 15 September 2013 (UTC)