Leveraging Wikipedia: Connecting Communities of Knowledge

As a librarian and novice Wikipedian, understanding how Wikipedia and librarians could work together is currently a major area of interest for me. So the arrival of Proffitt’s book on leveraging Wikipedia is most timely. As the #1lib1ref campaign has shown, Wikipedia benefits greatly from the contribution of libraries and librarians – as the State Library of Queensland’s 2018 dashboard at https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/State_Library_of_Queensland/State_Library_of_Queensland_1lib1ref_2018 has shown through tracking their contributions. What is not so obvious is how libraries and librarians can benefit from contributing to Wikipedia.

The chapters are written by both librarians and Wikipedians. On the Wikipedia side, discussion ranges from the relevance of the GLAM sector to the Wikimedia community, the role of the Wikim(p)edian-in-Residence in libraries, the experiences of a Wikipedian-in-Residence, the development of the Wikipedia Library, pedagogical use of Wikipedia in conjunction with library materials, and how Wikidata can be used to improve libraries’ web presence. On the librarian side, case studies include how the Pritzker Military Museum and Library has used Wikipedia to open up their collections to a much larger audience, the experiences of the New York Public Library with Wikipedia, the development of a tool to make archival collections more visible in Wikipedia, and the experience of US public libraries in using Wikipedia as well as useful advice on running edit-a-thons and new library service models using Wikipedia. And, in keeping with the spirit of the book, Lemus-Rojas (librarian) and Pintscher (Wikipedian) examine how Wikidata can be used as an open knowledge database by libraries. Editor Proffitt opens and closes the book with why libraries should become involved with Wikipedia and becoming a Wikipedian.

The case studies and discussions on the different ways Wikipedia can be used in libraries are thought-provoking. Understandably, all of the authors are enthusiastic about Wikipedia’s use in libraries, which is not, primarily, as an encyclopaedia, but as a way of opening up and making visible local collections and knowledge. The advice on running edit-a-thons is particularly useful – the one and only edit-a-thon I attended was disastrous and the organisers could have benefited greatly from this chapter. Reading this book, one can see that the pros are many but there is little discussion of cons, except for the acknowledgement of gender bias and the harassment of women editors. It is focused almost entirely on North American cases but whether this is due to the way in which chapters were invited or the failure of librarians/Wikipedians in other countries to submit chapters is unknown. From an Antipodean perspective, this is disappointing as there is some good work with Wikipedia being done by the State Library of New South Wales and the State Library of Queensland. Nonetheless, there is much that is useful in this book for librarians interested in how they might incorporate Wikipedia into their libraries and vice versa.