Wikipedia:Visiting Scholars/Libraries
The Wikipedia Library
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Wikipedia Visiting Scholars for Libraries
How can Wikipedia Visiting Scholars help your libraries?
Mission alignment and mutual benefit
[edit]Wikipedia is the world's most popular reference source. Many users begin their research on Wikipedia. Increasingly, it is used by those seeking information directly; Wikipedia’s highly ranked pages come up at the top of general web searches. Libraries working with Wikipedia not only help build the largest encyclopedia in human history by adding high quality references, but they bring readers back into the library to explore their collections. For Wikipedia, access to high quality published sources enhances the encyclopedia's mission, improves our reliability, and improves the impact of vital tertiary scholarship. Libraries working with a Wikipedian as a Wikipedia Visiting Scholar, granting full, remote access to its collections, reference support and in-library access to collections, will benefit in the following ways:
- Increased source usage
- Ensures that library resources are appropriately embedded in Wikipedia, which will give those important resources more visibility.
- Wikipedia Visiting Scholars lead readers from Wikipedia to the best available resources, and back to their own library for further research, increasing usage of library's materials.
- Librarians will be able to more effectively leverage the scholarship they do now in creating LibGuides and other lists and bibliographies by working with the visiting editor to ensure important, core resources are appropriately represented in Wikipedia.
- Demonstrated impact
- Wikipedia Visiting Scholars will note the number of articles they enhance with access to library resources, and the number of new citations they are able to correct or add, with help of the library collections. Libraries can cite those figures to prove that they are helping researchers use a popular source to gain access to authoritative information.
- Public promotion
- Wikipedia Visiting Scholars partnerships will be promoted within the Wikipedia community and shared with the library's institution, and shared public media.
- Wikipedia Visiting Scholars will blog and otherwise share their experiences, and can highlight participating libraries role in providing a valuable contribution to Wikipedia’s mission and purpose.
- Libraries can point to their participation and contributions and talk about how this heightened exposure and visibility is helping them to be more relevant to an online audience
Will library use statistics go up as a result? Will library users think about their library differently? This experiment will give us an opportunity to explore some of these important questions.
FAQ
[edit]- Is the Wikipedia Visiting Scholar position an in person residency?
Wikipedia Visiting Scholars are designed to be remote and unpaid positions, although a preference for a local/regional Wikipedian could be explored and paid travel could be arranged on a per-institution basis.
- Will a Visiting Scholar only use licensed resources, or could they also use free resources?
Visiting Scholars would use whatever resources the University/Library had access to, free or licensed. Wikipedia has no official preference for free/non-free sources. Visiting Scholars may be in a position to also help non-free resources to be more discoverable by Wikipedia editors and readers.
- Can there be more than one Visiting Scholar?
There's no limit to the number of Visiting Scholars an individual institution could host (provided it's consistent with their administrative and legal/licensing policies), nor how many can be hosted total among all participating institutions (only capped by how many active, experienced Wikipedia editors would qualify, which is likey in the several thousands at least).