Hi everyone, (and hi Bob!),
I work for OCLC, which is a non profit that has a mission to make libraries collections and services more accessible, and to lower costs for libraries. OCLC Research will be hosting a Wikipedian in Residence this summer. One of the things I hope we can accomplish through our residency is outreach to libraries – as Bob knows, we have a pretty good reputation with academic and research libraries through our Research Library Partnership.
While libraries are undergoing considerable disruption, they are not alone, (you could make that argument for higher education as well!) and this is a great opportunity, I think for libraries to rethink how they expose access to services and collections on the internet. Wikipedia could be one part of that puzzle. To speak in general terms, public libraries are quite concerned about ebooks, but academic and research libraries have, like museums, many unique assets and deep collection strengths that would benefit from broad exposure. Libraries and Wikipedia have a shared mission, but (from what I’ve observed) librarians and Wikipedians have a slightly different way of looking at the world, which can lead to some misunderstandings (one of these is different views on the importance of primary sources versus secondary sources). With some decoding for parties on both sides, I firmly believe that we can have some not only beneficial but truly awesome partnerships, and I look forward to that!
Best,
Merrilee
Merrilee Proffitt, Senior Program Officer
OCLC Research
From: libraries-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:libraries-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Bob Kosovsky
Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2012 8:14 AM
To: Wikimedia & Libraries
Cc: Wikimedia Chapters cultural partners coordination
Subject: Re: [libraries] [cultural-partners] IFLA
My employer (New York Public Library) and I are definitely interested in enhancing the relationship between Wikipedia and libraries: We've already had 2 editathons and soon a Wikipedian-in-residence position will be announced.
I've tried to drum up support through ALA - the American Library Association, but after a while my emails went unanswered - maybe their bureaucracy tied their hands, or they just didn't know how to deal with the request. It's a pity, because (as I tell people too often), Sue Gardner (CEO of Wikimedia) gave a fabulous speech there last year that was well received - but has not resulted in much change.
So I'm thinking of other ways to gather support. I intend to contact METRO - a Greater-New-York (i.e. includes eastern NJ and southern CT) cooperative organization whose head (Jason Kucsma) is very forward-looking.
Beyond that, it might be more useful for local libraries to organize with each other. "Sibling projects" - joint editathons or other activities shared by multiple libraries in disparate locations.
I'm not a member of IFLA, but I supervised an intern (from Germany) who is active with them (we're Facebook friends). I'd be interested in having more dialogue with IFLA members.
And I'd be happy to use this Wikimedia & Libraries list to talk more about possibilities.
Bob
Bob Kosovsky, Ph.D. -- Curator, Rare Books and Manuscripts,
Music Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
blog: http://www.nypl.org/blog/author/44 Twitter: @kos2
Listowner: OPERA-L ; SMT-TALK ; SMT-ANNOUNCE ; SoundForge-users
- My opinions do not necessarily represent those of my institutions -
On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 10:21 AM, Andrea Zanni <zanni.andrea84@gmail.com> wrote:
I agree with Nemo and Dominic.
[sorry, this is long and just my 2 cents]
Few years ago, we started working with museums because of some proactive Wikipedians and chapters
saw a void which needed to be filled: Liam, Lori, Sarah, Kippelboy and many others had competences and interest in bridging the
gap between Wikimedia projects and museums. They did (and are doing) good, interest is spreading, and now there are success cases, history, experience: we're building an infrastructure.
I think that the world of libraries is gonna be next, but I see a lot of issues too:
libraries are in the middle of a disruption, the Internet has been really "though" on them.
Librarians need to shift and adapt to survive (as a profession) an so do libraries themselves. (if you want to read something (I didn't) --> David Lankes "Atlas of New Librarianship")
Moreover, there is the ebook issue, and all the changes and consequence it will cause.
In this sense, as many other profession, I think that (statistically) librarians see Wikipedia more as a threat than an opportunity
(I see a pattern here :-), and in my personal experience they are really interested in understanding it better,
but often they do lack the skills.
I'm not a librarian and I'm not sure which kind of partnership could be organized with libraries:
I can imagine workshops and lessons for librarians (we did it with Wikimedia Italia few years ago), or for patrons,
and digitization patnerships for uploading books on Wikisource (as Wikimedia France did with Gallica).
A more complex relationship is yet to be build (and thought),
but we can ask our librarian Phoebe for some insights :-)
For IFLA, we have contact (I personally do),
but we should think very well waht to say and propose them.
Right now, I don't know.
Aubrey
2012/5/15 Federico Leva (Nemo) <nemowiki@gmail.com>
I think IFLA loves us, we have many friends there. Not many wikimedians attend it becaus it's very expensive, but some wikimedians volunteered in it (Aubrey for instance, when it's been in Milan; I think he's not been able to speak although he tried?). If you can get access you're lucky and you shouldn't miss the opportunity.
On the other hand, at least in Italy we regularly attend free librarians and publishers events (it's particularly easy in Milan, where most of the publishing world and of Italian wikimedians are).
Nemo
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