Putting the Library in Wikipedia By Lauren Pressley and Carolyn J. McCallum
Posted by Celia Walter | 3 Oct, 2008Few online resources provoke as much controversy in the library community as Wikipedia. Some librarians hate it, arguing that since anyone can edit it, it can’t be trusted. Others love it, because it is fast, easy to use, and a good starting point for research. With such a conflicted relationship, there’s no clear answer as to where (or whether) Wikipedia belongs in libraries. We librarians are not sure what we should do with it...[more]
Libraries Contributing to Wikipedia
University of North Texas:
http://tinyurl.com/4ga837
University of Washington:
http://tinyurl.com/25qzxf
Villanova University:
http://tinyurl.com/4v4ltn
Alternative Options
Repositories of Primary Sources:
www.uidaho.edu/special-collections/Other.Repositories.html
The California Digital Library:
www.cdlib.org
Digital Collections Online:
www.lib.uconn.edu/online/DigitalCollections
OAIster:
www.oaister.org
Digital Library Federation Digital Collections Registry: http://dlf.grainger.uiuc.edu/DLFCollectionsRegistry
More Information on Editing
Broughton, John. Wikipedia: The Missing Manual. Sebastopol, CA, Pogue Press, 2008. 502 pp.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Wikipedia:Contributing_to_Wikipedia
Librarians wishing to become involved in Wikipedia should join the group of librarian editors
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Wikipedia:WikiProject_Librarians).
Reasons to Contribute to Wikipedia
• Reverse the trend of decreasing traffic to library websites
• Create a more scholarly environment
• Reach new and potential library users
• Extend special collections