Hi Richard, you queried in a previous posting whether relations between Academia and Wikipedians were better in the UK. But I suspect that no-one is truly in a position to answer that. In both the US and the UK the situation will be complex, some Academics are Wikipedians, some Academics judge us by the quality we'd achieved by 2006 and really need to check again and reassess the project. Some Academics respect and value us for the way we try to teach today's kids not to cut and paste. Others despair at us as the source of much of the plagiarism they receive from students.
Of course this is a very different issue to the debate about Open source freely available journals, a debate where some people on this list have strongly held and diametrically opposed views. Wikipedia is a Tertiary source not a Primary or Secondary one and cannot exist without those primary and secondary sources. So their continued health matters to us, but clearly there is a divide as to how that continued health is to be achieved, and indeed defined. Wikimedia is itself very much a part of the open source movement, but that doesn't mean that all Wikimedians believe that everything should be open source.
As for your two suggestions about attending scholarly conferences and working with libraries, there has been a different emphasis between the US and the UK in the last couple of years. Here in the UK we have prioritised outreach to GLAM sector (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums), whilst the US prioritised Universities.
<http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education_strategy>
Whilst the US is now expanding its GLAM program.
I have participated in editathons we've had in the UK at both the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum, I didn't take part in the British library one, but I gather it was a success. I think that would count as one of your "training program for experienced Wiki editors at a major research library". The sort of articles coming out of these collaborations include
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoxne_hoard
WSC
On 23 May 2012 05:30, Richard Jensen
<rjensen@uic.edu> wrote:
Sadly I think this discussion demonstrates some hostility toward academe. (here's a quote from yesterday addressed to me on this list: "...knowledge robberbarons standing athwart history imagining they and their institutions alone, had the requisite skills and expertise to engage in knowledge production. Until they didn't. Enjoy your new neighbors in trash heap of history." I would code his emotional tone as "hostile")
Well it's always nice to see people citing the lessons of history, especially since I'm a specialist in that sort of OR. But the underlying hostility is a problem that bothers me a lot and I have been trying to think of ways to bridge the gap. There is in operation a Wikimedia Foundation Education program that is small and will not, in my opinion, scale up easily to the size needed. In any case the Foundation plans to cut the US-Canada program loose in 12 months to go its own way. see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Education_Working_Group/Wikimedia_Foundation_Role
My own thinking is currently along two lines:
a) set up a highly visible Wiki prsence at scholarly conventions (in multiple disciplines) with 1) Wiki people at booths to explain the secrets of Wikipedia to interested academics and 2) hands-on workshops to show professors how to integrate student projects into their classes. (and yes, professors given paid time off to attend these conventions, often plus travel money.)
b) run a training program for experienced Wiki editors at a major research library. (I'm thinking just of Wiki history editors here.) For those who want it provide access to sources like JSTOR. Bring in historians covering main historiographical themes. I think this could help hundreds of editors find new topics, methods and sources that would lead to hundreds of thousands of better edits.
Richard Jensen
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