A hands-on workshop instructing library, archives, and museum professionals on how they can contribute to Wikipedia. Presented at ARLIS 2013 on April 26, 2013.

1. THE ART OF GLAM-WIKI
#ARLIS2013
#GLAMwiki
The Basics of Sharing
Cultural Knowledge
with the World
on Wikipedia

2. PART 1: HOW WIKIPEDIA
WORKS, AND WHY
LIBRARIES, ARCHIVES, &
MUSEUMS SHOULD CARE

3. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia
 Free as in beer & free as in speech; no
advertising
 Created and maintained by
volunteers, supported by the Wikimedia
Foundation
 ―A hybrid of tool and community‖
 All edits/versions are recorded
indefinitely
 4 million+ articles, 285 languages

4. Encyclopedia Number of Articles
English Wikipedia 4,168,694
Encyclopedia Britannica (online) 120,000
Encyclopedia Britannica (print, 2002) 65,000
Size of English Wikipedia (August 2010) if it were printed and bound
Biggest. Encyclopedia. Ever.

5. 0
50,000,000
100,000,000
150,000,000
200,000,000
250,000,000
300,000,000
350,000,000
400,000,000
450,000,000
500,000,000
visitors to all si.edu
sites
visitors to
wikipedia.org
Monthly Visitors to Smithsonian
Websites vs. Wikipedia.org

6. What or who merits an
article on Wikipedia?
If a person or topic has received
significant coverage in reliable
sources that are independent of the
subject, then it is deemed ―notable,‖
and may merit its own Wikipedia
article.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability

7. Core Wikipedia Policies
 Neutral Point of View
 Verifiability
reliable sources, cited correctly
 No “original research”
i.e. unpublished
data, opinions, speculation
 Assume good faith towards
other editors
 Avoid conflict of interest (i.e.
editing page about self, boss)
See Wikipedia: Policies
and guidelines

8. WikiProjects
WikiProjects = venues on Wikipedia where editors
coordinate coverage around a particular field or topic
Real examples:
WikiProject Architecture
WikiProject Fungi
WikiProject Visual Arts
WikiProject Martial Arts
WikiProject Feminism
WikiProject District of Columbia
Lactarius indigo, Dan Molter [CC-BY-SA-3.0]

9. GLAM-Wiki Project:
A Global Network and Community

10. Wikipedia & GLAMs: a
relationship of mutual benefit
Wikipedia benefits from GLAM resources and
people, resulting in better articles and higher
quality of sources cited
GLAMs benefit from having information about
their collections available to a much larger
audience, and from the experience of working
with volunteers from the Wikimedia community

11. Google Wikipedia
GLAM
website
Typical research process:
Wikipedia is frequently a
midpoint, not an endpoint

12. GLAM-wiki benefits the public too!
Online researchers & students benefit
from consulting better quality, authoritative
Wikipedia articles
Editors benefit from the learning
experience of researching, writing and
collaborating on articles

13. PART 2: ANATOMY OF AN
ARTICLE

14. 3 Standard Parts of a Typical Article
Lead section
 Summary paragraphs—should read like an
abstract, summarizing the article as a whole
 Table of Contents
 Infobox, an image (maybe)
Main body
 Up to 4 levels of sub-sections (think h2, h3, etc.)
Closing sections
 See also, References, Notes
 Bibliography, Further reading, External links
 Categories, interwiki links

16. Template: Infobox Artist
{{Infobox artist
| name = Louise Nevelson
| image = Louise and Neith Nevelson.jpg
| imagesize = 250px
| caption = Louise Nevelson and granddaughter [[Neith Nevelson]]
| birth_name = Leah Berliawsky
| birth_date = {{birth date |1899|9|23|}}
| birth_place =[[Pereiaslav-Khmelnytskyi|Perislav]], [[Poltava
Governorate]], [[Russian Empire]]
| death_date = {{death date and age |1988|4|17|1899|9|23|}}
| death_place = New York City
| nationality = American
| field = Sculpture
}}

17. Data from
Wikipedia

20. PART 3: LETS START EDITING!

21. Creating a user account
 Sharing an account is not allowed, so you should
not create an account for your organization
 You can edit without an account, but your IP
address is recorded (less privacy, in the end)
 User name: real name or pseudonym up to you
 Other advantages of an account:
• A record of your work builds credibility
• Ability to create/rename articles, upload images
• More likely to receive help from others

22. Creating a user page
 Can be as personal or impersonal as you want
 Can state which WikiProjects you belong
to, show awards (Barnstars) that you have
received from the community
 Good place to put a conflict of interest statement
for GLAM employees

23. Conflict of interest statement for
GLAM employee user page
Conflict of Interest Statement
I, User: [username here], am an employee of [your
institution], and a cultural institution per
Wikiproject:GLAM. I accept the editing conditions
specified at that page. I will not make any edits that
would not be beneficial to the goals of Wikipedia.
My main edits will tend to consist of the following
activities:
– Example1
– Example2
I will modify my editing behavior based on problems cited
by other editors or if my editing conflicts with other
Wikipedia guidelines. I ask that other editors do not
hesitate to contact me, via my user talk page, if I
appear to be going against this declaration. [sign here]

24. Creating a user sandbox
A sandbox is a place to experiment. If your sandbox link is
red, click on it to create the page.
You can make multiple sub-sandboxes by adding another /
after sandbox and adding a new directory name
Keep search engines at bay: template {{Userspace draft}}

25. User Talk pages
 New posts go at the bottom
 Users may reply either on your talk page, or on
the page where you posted
 When you post something, always sign your
name by clicking or typing ~~~~
 You can choose to be notified by email when
someone posts to your talk page
 See Help: Using talk pages

26. Article Talk pages
 Work very much the same way as user talk pages
 A place for editors to discuss the topic
 Give you a good feel about whether or not the
article has issues, controversies
 If you feel that part of an article has problems or
errors, this is a place where you can make
suggestions instead of editing it yourself

27. Watchlist & Contributions
My watchlist - see the latest changes in
your watched articles (Tip: Atom feed
link left nav column, get updates instantly
in your feed reader or email client)
My contributions – a record of your edits

28. Editing Wiki Markup
• What you see is not what you get
• Use the buttons or type in the markup by hand
• Find the ―cheat sheet‖ by typing WP:CHEAT into
the search box, or save this PDF to your
computer

29. Creating or Editing an Article
NEW:
Search (unsuccessfully) then click on the resulting
redlink to create the page
―Submit for review‖ is not required for registered
editors
EXISTING:
―Edit this page‖ tab edits the whole article
―[edit]‖ links appear in major section headings
See also: WP:CREATE

30. Adding Sources (cite templates)
References
1. "A Finding Aid to the Macbeth Gallery records, 1838-
1968". Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Retrieved 15 February 2013.
The citation lives in the body of the
article, but it displays at the bottom of the
article via template {{Reflist}}

31. Adding Sources (cite templates)
1st mention of source
<ref name=aaa>{{cite web|title=A Finding Aid to the
Macbeth Gallery records, 1838-
1968|url=http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/macbeth-
gallery-records-9703/more|publisher=Archives of
American Art, Smithsonian Institution|accessdate=15
February 2013}}</ref>
2nd mention of source (named reference)
<ref name=aaa />

32. Cite menu
(see demonstration – adding by
ISBN, using named references)

33. Tips & shortcuts for adding citations
• Always assign a ―Ref Name‖ (easy to cite multiple times)
• The ―cite book‖ template has an ISBN lookup feature
• Using WorldCat for URL field encourages library use
Other time saving tools:
– Google Books Citation Tool reftag.appspot.com
– New York Times Citation Tool reftag.appspot.com/nytweb.py
– DOI Citation Tool reftag.appspot.com/doiweb.py
Some websites include ready-made Wikipedia citations
(i.e. Cooper-Hewitt)

34. Action!
1. Choose an article that you think
needs some love. Copy and
paste text to your sandbox.
2. Try adding a reference to the
article in your sandbox.
3. Preview & save – don’t forget
the edit summary!

35. Images: Wikimedia Commons vs.
―Non-free Use‖ rationale
• Wikimedia Commons image
–commons.wikimedia.org
–Example: Teton Range (Ansel Adams
government photograph)
• Non-free image
–en.wikipedia.org
–Example: Look Mickey (Roy
Lichtenstein painting)

36. Wikimedia Commons donations
• Children’s Museum of Indianapolis
• Walters Art Museum case study
• Archives of American Art case study

37. Share the WikiLove!

38. This Wikipedia tutorial for GLAM professionals was
created by Sara Snyder (user:Sarasays) for the ARLIS-
NA 2013 conference workshop held on April 26, 2013.
Please feel free to expand, improve, re-use, and share!