Hi all, I have more NARA news to share. The U.S. National Archives' updated Open Government Plan[1] was just published on Wednesday with this announcement. It places a lot of emphasis on how the National Archives plans to work with the Wikimedia community in order to help fulfill its mission, especially the flagship "Make Access Happen" goal. This is a follow up to the 2012 version of the Open Government Plan, which also mentioned Wikipedia in a less developed way.

From the executive summary, the document notes: "Over the next two years we will work to increase the number of National Archives records available on Wikimedia Commons, continue our work to engage local communities of volunteer Wikipedians with on-site events, and collaborate on the development of the GLAM-Wiki U.S. Consortium." On pages 19-20, there is a fleshed out section about the agency's strategic approach to Wikipedia, which I am copying below:

Expand Wikipedia Efforts

NARA has been engaging the Wikipedia community since 2011, when we welcomed a Wikipedian in Residence and began holding events to build awareness of the records of the National Archives. In 2013, we welcomed a full-time employee devoted to engaging the Wikipedia community along with NARA staff members to promote greater access, reuse, and context for our records on Wikipedia.

Our work strengthening digitization and description fuels our ability to make records available on external platforms like Wikipedia. In 2012, we shared 100,000 digital images from our holdings to Wikimedia Commons. This work enabled digital copies of our records to be incorporated into Wikimedia projects and Wikipedia articles. The 4,000 Wikipedia articles featuring our records received more than one billion page views in Fiscal Year 2013. Over the next two years we will work to increase the number of National Archives records available on Wikimedia Commons, which furthers our strategic goal to “Make Access Happen” and expands re-use of our records by the public.

We are continuing our work to engage local communities of volunteer Wikipedians with on-site events, including skills-building workshops and “edit-a-thons” for improving Wikipedia content related to our holdings. In addition, we are establishing a model for “scan-a-thons” to enable citizen archivist stakeholder groups to digitize our records for access.

We have worked to develop policies and best practices for NARA staff and other professionals to contribute to Wikipedia articles and NARA staff members regularly engage in sharing our experiences and insights about Wikipedia with other cultural institutions. We are also collaborating on the development of the GLAM-Wiki U.S. Consortium, which brings together archivists, librarians, museum professionals, and Wikipedians to work on building skills and shared understandings.

The rest of the document touches on other open government, crowdsourcing, and "citizen archivist" initiatives that may also be of general interest to you all. It even cites Simple English Wikipedia's definition for "API". As far as I know, this is likely the most prominent policy document from a cultural or government agency to enshrine collaboration with Wikipedia in institutional strategy (though the previous NARA Open Government Plan from 2012 comes close), and I think we succeed in talking about Wikipedia engagement in a way that Wikipedians will find ethical.

Dominic

[1] For those interested, in the United States each executive federal agency is required by law to publish an "Open Government Plan", described as a public roadmap that details how the agency will incorporate the principles of transparency and open government into the core mission objectives of the agency. The link has more information. There is no Wikipedia article on this. :(

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