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ALIA Wikipedia and libraries
The document presents an overview of Wikipedia and its relationship with libraries, highlighting the importance of open access and collaborative knowledge-sharing. It discusses Wikipedia's structure, editing process, and community engagement, as well as the role of libraries in providing credible sources. The authors, Pru Mitchell and Steven Zhang, emphasize the value of Wikipedia in enhancing education and fostering community involvement in content creation.
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ALIA Wikipedia and libraries
- 1. Wikipedia and Libraries Pru Mitchell & Steven Zhang Wikimedia Australia contact@wikimedia.org.au
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- 3. Presenters • ALIAmember 20+ years • Manager Library & Information Services, Australian Council for Educational Research • Committee member, Wikimedia Australia • GLAM Wiki conference, Canberra, August 2009 Pru • Wikimedia Future of Education, London, June 2014 Mitchell • President, Wikimedia Australia • Editing Wikimedia projects for six years. • Active in dispute resolution and mediation • Created dispute resolution noticeboard • Worked for Wikimedia Foundation as research fellow Steve Zhang
- 4. Session overview 1.Why are we here? 2. Why Wikipedia and libraries? 3. How does Wikipedia work?
- 5. Using Wikipedia asa source I have followed a link to Wikipedia I have read a Wikipedia article to find information I know at least 3 ways to evaluate a Wikipedia article www.surveymonkey.com/s/WPLibraries
- 6. Editing Wikipedia I have edited something in Wikipedia I have edited a reference in Wikipedia I have a Wikipedia username I have created a new Wikipedia article
- 7. Contributing to Wikipedia I understand Wikipedia's licence CC BY-SA I have uploaded my own content to a Wikimedia project I have taught others about Wikipedia I have conducted research about Wikipedia I am involved in administration of Wikipedia I support Wikipedia financially
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- 9. Our commitment Imaginea world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge Wikipedia’s five pillars Neutrality - Verifiability – Consensus - Civility Openness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars
- 10. Open and freeaccess • Creative Commons licence CC-by-sa • Actively promote open access • Respect and raise awareness of copyright • Proudly not for profit and neutral – Volunteer donor funded – No ads • We value expertise – from anyone, anywhere
- 11. Visibility and scale • Site rank #6 globally • Where your users are • Where your users come from • Free to copy means content can be widely distributed, and linked to School librarians transform learning 2014 AASL
- 12. Information standards •Disambiguation = Authority control • Wikidata: www.wikidata.org • Metadata: categories, lists, media files • Fulfilment tool pilot OCLC • Wiki infrastructure provided - free with IT expertise included
- 13. Sources and citation • Only as good as our sources • Libraries have the best sources • Wikipedia has the most eyeballs • Wikipedia leads users back to sources at libraries • 8th largest referrer of DOI links Jake Orlowitz: Future of libraries and Wikipedia slideshare.net/JakeOcaasi Trove Citation tool
- 14. Local and global • Your community – your community’s history – your community’s interests and passions • Note Notability and Conflict of Interest – start small, grow at your own pace, mistakes can be fixed • Community languages ACTION: Identify gaps for your community
- 15. Volunteers • 20million registered editors • 80,000 active users • 1,400 administrators • 200 employees 13ab37, 9 Feb 2014, Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon CC-BY-SA https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Art%2Bfeminism_Wikipedia_E dit-a-thon_(2).jpg
- 16. Working with Wikipedia • Subscribe to news: GLAM, Libraries, Education • Facilitate editor access to your collection • Contribute unique local content AND METADATA • Host a Wikipedian in Residence http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlNT16gqHyo • Webinar: oclc.org/research/events/2014/10-21.html
- 17. Wikimedia Australia •We’re here to help … • Advice on using Wikipedia (or other projects) • Wikipedia edit training – Groups or one-on-one
- 18. HOW DOES WIKIPEDIAWORK?
- 19. Terminology • Wikipediathe encyclopedia • Wikimedia Foundation (USA) Not-for-profit organisation that runs Wikipedia • Wikimedia Australia Inc Australian chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation – support Australia volunteers – promote/develop Australian content • Wikimedia Totality of organisations and volunteers
- 20. Wikipedia statistics •492.11 million unique readers • 21.29 billion page views (~43 each) – 3.16 billion from mobile devices (~15%) • 14.73 thousand “new editors” • 77.06 thousand “active editors” • Articles in 287 languages – Number of articles in English : 4,324,379 – 7 other languages have over 1 million articles July 2013 http://stats.wikimedia.org
- 21. What is aWiki? • A Wiki is a web page that anyone can make changes to. • The version you see can be changed at any time, by any person, without any tools other than a web browser. • This means that each Wikipedia page is in a constant state of change as different people make contributions.
- 22. Who creates Wikipedia? • Unlike traditional encyclopedias, Wikipedia is not created by experts. • it relies on crowd-sourcing – having large numbers of non-experts contribute what they can, rather than a small number of experts contributing large amounts of information • but references to reliable sources should be made
- 23. Structure of anarticle
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- 31. Evaluating an article • Check references – Quality of sources – Relevance of sources • Check length and structure - relative to importance of subject • Check edit history for recent activity • Check talk page for debates • Check criteria for Featured article
- 32. Who can edit?Anyone! “All are equal but …” • Anonymous Editors • are not registered • first-time/occasional editors or vandals • New Editors • registered but not trusted, some are vandals • Trusted Editors • 4 days and 10 “good” edits to establish trust • Administrators & Bureaucrats
- 33. Who does edit? 2011 survey revealed … • Average age: 32 • But older editors make more contributions than younger editors
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- 35. Why do theyedit? • Started because: • Continue because:
- 36. How safe isWikipedia when anyone can edit it? • Yes, there’s vandalism and spam, but … • Every edit is recorded, all old versions are saved and can be easily restored after vandalism • Abuse Filter – automated tool for preventing common patterns of abuse • Recent Change Patrol – people who monitor recent edits across all topics for obvious errors or vandalism • Watchers – people who monitor pages of interest to them – monitor for subtle vandalism • “The beast of one billion eyes” – readers want Wikipedia to be right not wrong
- 37. Wikipedia decision-making •Wikipedia is an ad-hoc-racy • Decisions about the contents of Wikipedia are made by the “community” • The Wikimedia Foundation sets policies to do with legal issues, but not with content • Decisions are ideally reached through discussion between interested parties, but occasionally requires uninvolved help (dispute resolution) • Can be somewhat abrasive at times
- 38. Five Pillars ofWikipedia • Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia • Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of view • Wikipedia is free content that anyone can edit, use, modify and distribute • Editors should interact with each other in a respectful manner • Wikipedia does not have firm rules
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Editor's Notes
- #3 The fact that we are here this evening is thanks to ALIA, and in particular Kirrin Sampson, ALIA’s Training and Strategic Programs Manager who coordinated the partnership and the national rollout of these information evenings. Thanks to Margie Anderson for local organisation and to RMIT for hosting. We would also like to acknowledge Liam Wyatt, whose previous presentations on the links between Wikipedia and the GLAM sector inspired many of these slides.
- #5 Our plan for this session looks like this. We hope this looks something like what you were expecting, but as this is a wiki session it should be possible for you to edit this to some extent – by consensus.
- #6 In a thing as huge as Wikipedia there are many ways people experience the beast. You have a checklist of some ways some people engage with Wikipedia, and it would help us to know which of these boxes each of you ticks. * Unless you have actively resisted, I suspect most of you have been led to Wikipedia from somewhere online at some point. It is pretty hard to avoid this. It ranks highly in search engines. * By far the majority of people who use Wikipedia use it as an information source. It provides an overview or introduction to practically any topic. We hope that all users of any information source have the information literacy skills to evaluate that source, and this forms a key part of our role as librarians and/or educators. Can you complete the rest of the questions on this checklist, and then introduce yourself to the person near you and see if you can list at least 3 ways you would evaluate an article in Wikipedia. Use the printed survey which helps us evaluate the program, or if you are online please use the online version at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WPLibraries
- #7 Editing Wikipedia is something anyone can do, and something we would love everyone to be part of. It would be wonderful if every time you benefited from useful information in Wikipedia you resolved to contribute an edit that will enhance the encyclopaedia for someone else. Note that individuals edit Wikipedia not organisations, and while there may be a ‘work element’ to your editing, please sign up in your own right – don’t set up a corporate wiki account. Many editors use a pseudonym – that’s fine. The sooner you get an account the more likely you will be able to get a username that is meaningful to you.
- #8 There are many other ways that librarians contribute to Wikipedia, and we will consider more of these later on. A big thanks to any of you or your institutions that do contribute content, education or research – and to those who donate to keep the Wikipedia servers running.
- #9 As already mentioned, Wikipedia is big – and it is not possible to cover more than a fraction of the activities around Wikipedia and libraries. We have selected some examples for this session.
- #10 Founded in 2001, Wikipedia is now the #1 encyclopaedia in the world. We are not the first to notice how closely Wikipedia’s mission and ideology mirror those of libraries, particularly public libraries. It is a huge commitment, and Wikipedia works actively to make it a reality for all human beings and for all knowledge. As a librarian I find it is a useful exercise to consider how well our library networks and practices are doing in this area. It is particularly useful to consider how Wikipedia and libraries can work in partnership to realise this more effectively. Throughout this presentation there are links to key Wikipedia documents and policies which we won’t necessarily have time to cover in full. We will provide ALIA with slides and links. These keywords: neutrality, verifiability, consensus, civility and openness sum up the statements contained in the Wikipedia Five Pillars document: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars.
- #11 It is appropriate in Open Access Week that we start with Openness - one of the five pillars, and one of non-negotiables in Wikipedia. It is not possible to reach every human being if some content is only accessible by members, or in some countries, or in certain software formats. All content in Wikipedia is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License (CC-BY-SA) This means that as long as you attribute it [acknowledge the creator], all material from Wikipedia can be used by anyone, for any purpose, including commercial purposes [Note - These slides are licensed under the same licence so as long as you acknowledge Wikimedia Australia when you use them, you can present this to your staff, or repurpose the slides for another session] Therefore, nothing can be added to Wikipedia unless it permits such re-use. Wikipedia is very strict on removing copyright-protected material that does not meet the requirements of this licence. Wikipedia’s neutrality is also relevant when we consider openness. Transparency of content and process, and no-ads policy means we are not favouring content or selling search results or rankings according to commercial interest.
- #12 You know from experience that Wikipedia articles are in the top search results from search engines. [Currently ranked #6 in Alexa globally http://www.alexa.com/topsites]. Size is important on the web. Statistics from a recent presentation by Jake Ocassi give the size of Wikipedia as: 30 million articles - 286 languages - 2 billion edits - 8000 views per second - 500 million monthly visitors [Citation: www.slideshare.net/JakeOcaasi/wikipedia-and-libraries-increasing-your-librarys-visibility ] Discoverability is a hot commodity in our overloaded information world. Wikipedia is the fastest way to reach your audience [Liam Wyatt] The image on this slide from School Librarians Transform Learning illustrates “Sources students are ‘very likely’ to use in a research assignment [from the results of the Pew Internet report: Purcell, K et al (2012). How teens do research in the digital world. Pew Internet http://www.pewinternet.org/2012/11/01/how-teens-do-research-in-the-digital-world] It makes sense to be where your users are, and both OCLC and Wikipedia are involved in making sure their content is attractive to search engines, eg through schema.org Free to copy means your knowledge gets widely distributed – more so, than copyrighted content which has restrictions on distribution and re-publishing Acknowledgement graphic: http://www.ala.org/aasl/sites/ala.org.aasl/files/content/aaslissues/advocacy/AASL_Infographic_FINAL.pdf The AASL infographic School Librarians Transform Learning is part of the digital supplement to the Sept/Oct 2014 issue of ALA’s American Libraries magazine. Members of the media and public are permitted to repost the PDF info-graphic, provided no alterations are made and that the posting is for educational, noncommercial purposes only. [www.ala.org/aasl/digitalsupplement] ©2014 American Association of School Librarians. All rights reserved.
- #13 Libraries are excellent at creating, maintaining and applying standards BUT have tended to keep them locked within the library sector ‘silo’ and sit back while other web-based information standards grew up in parallel. Cataloguers and Wikipedia share problems of disambiguation between people with the same names, unique/persistent identifiers and authority control over topics. Just as library users don’t want to search under multiple subject headings to find all the resources on a topic, no Wikipedia editor wants to spend time creating a Wikipedia article to find there is a article already under a different title. The article titles in Wikipedia form a subject taxonomy more universal and comprehensive than any other thesaurus. Wikipedians share librarians love of metadata - they create categories, make lists of everything, tag multimedia files. Finding a comprehensive list of instances is a valuable service in a keyword, fulltext dominated world. Not something a search engine does. The human readable wiki is supported by machine readable versions through wikidata – Structured data exported in a machine readable form for re-use – at scale. The BOTS are great wiki workers. It is good to see links being made between Wikipedia and library organisations, especially collaboration with global standards organisations, eg OCLC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:The_Wikipedia_Library/Pages. The goal of the fulfilment pilot is to lead users from a Wikipedia citation to the fulltext of that source in one click.
- #14 One of the areas where standards are helping both Wikipedia and libaries is bibliographic data. All those years of cataloguing resources, especially books and journals are paying off. Citation is important to Wikipedia’s encyclopaedic style of writing. Wikipedia is not somewhere to post original research, all content must be verifiable. This fits well with library resources, expertise and philosophy. Scroll to the bottom of any Wikipedia article and check It is important to point this out to students, who are taught by everyone (especially Wikipedia) not to cite Wikipedia. Encourage them to read the article as a starting point/overview of a topic and then to follow the references. How does this help libraries? Lead Wikipedia readers to good sources by adding quality citations and references. The Trove citation tool makes this easy.. Ensure Wikipedia editors in your community know the benefits of library membership, especially access to e-journals. Make it easy for your members to link directly from a citation to your resources by participating in technical projects such as Wikipedia Library and OCLC fulfilment [see ALIA2014 paper on university template: http://nationalconference2014.alia.org.au/content/digital-doorway-gaining-library-users-through-wikipedia]
- #15 So far, I have been talking about the need for scale and global reach - but Wikipedia also offers much at the very local level. Not many traditional publishers are interested in the history of your local war memorials, but Wikipedia will publish an article about this along with the latest popular fad, or a local cultural festival. Three important things to be aware of: * Notability * Conflict of interest * No original research There are currently 287 Wikipedias in different languages – not simply translations
- #16 Wikipedia runs on volunteers Stats from http://www.slideshare.net/JakeOcaasi/wikipedia-and-libraries-increasing-your-librarys-visibility
- #17 Wikipedians in Residence are Wikimedians who dedicate time to working in-house at an organization http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedian_in_Residence
- #21 From http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/ New editors – registered, made 10th edit in that month Active editor – made 5 edits in that month
- #34 2011 survey But older editors do more edits Gender issue: mostly male editors