Hi,

I agree with the point of view of Andrea and Remi. As Remi and Andrea told, is "not only" a problem of Wikipedia. They are changing their whole system and we are in the middle.

Due to our "success" with museums, some libraries in Barcelona have contacted me asking if there is a way to connect with Wikipedia. Our project here in Barcelona (still at a very very very draft point) is to expand the library experience for the users/readers. The claim should be like something similar to this:

"Did you enjoy reading this book? Did you learned many things?, now please help us to improve related contents on wiki!" -> It is an idea of the National librarian, who wants to go-wiki somehow.

So we are thinking on training the librarians Wiki skills, so they will use Wikipedia as a tool to interact with their visitors. We are also interested in creating a "Wiki-point" in several libraries -> With a computer connected to Wikipedia and some "how to edit" printed handbooks". But as I told you, this is only at a very draft point, so opinions are welcome.

IMHO, Librarians wants to work with us, and we should create some "welcome model" and some model projects that would be usable everywhere.

So Bob, If you achieve the W-i-R position at NYPL, it would be great as a laboratory for everybody, as liam did at the BM :)

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

_______________________________________________ cultural-partners mailing list cultural-partners@wikimedia.ch http://lists.wikimedia.ch/listinfo/cultural-partners

_______________________________________________ Libraries mailing list Libraries@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/libraries

Actually, some of the most enthusiastic Wikipedians I know are librarians.. In the Netherlands we even had a wiki project called Wiki Loves Bieb (Bieb is nickname for Bibliotheek or library): http://wikilovesbieb.nl/ Jane

2012/5/16 Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se

On 2012-05-15 16:21, Andrea Zanni wrote:

...

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.

In the Swedish Wikipedia, the articles on libraries, librarianship, and library science are very short, poorly written and without references. It's obvious that library school students aren't wikipedians, in the way that soccer fans or physics teachers are. The free encyclopedia attracts more textile craft and fashion nerds than librarians.

Sweden is a protestant and largely secular country, but the Swedish Wikipedia has detailed articles about every Catholic pope. Meanwhile, the list of directors of our national library has red links, http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/**Lista_%C3%B6ver_svenska_** riksbibliotekarierhttp://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lista_%C3%B6ver_svenska_riksbibliotekarier

I don't think the Swedish Wikipedia is unique in this.

Nemo mentioned that IFLA conferences are expensive to go to. Yes. The problem is that we are considering the registration fee, instead of negotiating the compensation for giving the keynote speeches.

Imagine a librarian in 1985 who receives a phone call from the future: "Hello, this is a call from the future. We have the fully electronic, free-for-all encyclopedia here, larger than anything you've ever seen." Would the librarian yawn and ignore it, or be all excited and jumping?

Where exactly did we go wrong? If the largest encyclopedia ever is not exciting to librarians, what planet is this? Why do we have to push Wikipedia down their throats, one wikipedian-in-residence at a time? Why aren't they tearing it out of our hands? I don't think it's the Internet and all electronic gadgets that need explanation. It's the library world that needs to explain what exactly they are doing.

-- Lars Aronsson (lars@aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se

______________________________**_________________ cultural-partners mailing list cultural-partners@wikimedia.ch http://lists.wikimedia.ch/**listinfo/cultural-partnershttp://lists.wikimedia.ch/listinfo/cultural-partners

Aubrey, I agree with some of what you say, although it remains difficult to make sweeping generalizations. As I recall, one of the problems with the "Wiki Loves Bieb" project was that libraries consider themselves the authority on the original works in their possession and so when librarians created articles on Wikipedia they were shocked when these were nominated for deletion or changed by other editors.

I am a great believer in learning by doing, and my approach with museum people and library people is to show them work on Wikipedia done by colleague institutions (whenever possible, institutions they know well). Usually this helps. It remains a question of preaching the "Wikification" evangelism, I'm afraid, and that takes personal face-to-face communication that Wikipedia just doesn't have (by nature).

I have been a volunteer at my local history museum for 2 years now, and they have only just now decided to release their own photographs of artifacts (not everything has been photographed yet) under a CC-by-SA license. Digitising the list of books in their library along with their meta data over the books, or digitising some of the shorter books, is now currently being considered. Their main fear is whether this is legal and safe to do, and having proven, published examples by larger institutions helps.

Jane 2012/5/16 Andrea Zanni zanni.andrea84@gmail.com

I find this thread extremely interesting and deep. If you do not have problem with that, I will forward some of the questions you raised to the librarian mailing list in Italy, it would be good to have an answer directly from them.

Some librarians friends of mine just told me that is mainly a problem of attitude: many, many librarians do think that "Wikipedia is not reliable", "Books are better", "Authorship is king" and many other claim we know very well. This is widespread in the field, in addition to a revolution which is disruption the whole profession - and they are not prepared. In Italy, many librarians have little computer literacy, they work on catalogs and with paper books, they don't really understand what is going on, and are very (emotionally, mentally) attached to the old physical-paper-world they understand and know and manage. Just few librarians undertand that they deal with information and not the support of the information (in this case, books). It will be a painful switch, I'm afraid.

I know that this it is not a very deep insight but I think it is quite true and the consequences of this attitude are shallow.

Aubrey

2012/5/16 Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se

...

On 2012-05-15 16:21, Andrea Zanni wrote:

...

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.

In the Swedish Wikipedia, the articles on libraries, librarianship, and library science are very short, poorly written and without references. It's obvious that library school students aren't wikipedians, in the way that soccer fans or physics teachers are. The free encyclopedia attracts more textile craft and fashion nerds than librarians.

Sweden is a protestant and largely secular country, but the Swedish Wikipedia has detailed articles about every Catholic pope. Meanwhile, the list of directors of our national library has red links, http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/**Lista_%C3%B6ver_svenska_** riksbibliotekarierhttp://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lista_%C3%B6ver_svenska_riksbibliotekarier

I don't think the Swedish Wikipedia is unique in this.

Nemo mentioned that IFLA conferences are expensive to go to. Yes. The problem is that we are considering the registration fee, instead of negotiating the compensation for giving the keynote speeches.

Imagine a librarian in 1985 who receives a phone call from the future: "Hello, this is a call from the future. We have the fully electronic, free-for-all encyclopedia here, larger than anything you've ever seen." Would the librarian yawn and ignore it, or be all excited and jumping?

Where exactly did we go wrong? If the largest encyclopedia ever is not exciting to librarians, what planet is this? Why do we have to push Wikipedia down their throats, one wikipedian-in-residence at a time? Why aren't they tearing it out of our hands? I don't think it's the Internet and all electronic gadgets that need explanation. It's the library world that needs to explain what exactly they are doing.

-- Lars Aronsson (lars@aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se

______________________________**_________________ cultural-partners mailing list cultural-partners@wikimedia.ch http://lists.wikimedia.ch/**listinfo/cultural-partnershttp://lists.wikimedia.ch/listinfo/cultural-partners

---

cultural-partners mailing list cultural-partners@wikimedia.ch http://lists.wikimedia.ch/listinfo/cultural-partners

On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 5:00 PM, Asaf Bartov abartov@wikimedia.org wrote:

What would it say? Let's sketch together some notes for such a keynote. I think once we have a knock-out keynote outlined, we can easily get invited to deliver it at one of the next library shindigs.

If I may add a little more: What struck me about Sue Gardner's speech was

that it was targeted so that there would be something for everybody.

I can't remember most of it (and I remember my disappointment at reading the published summaries), but the sentence that sticks in my mind was: "Wikipedia is the fifth most-visited-website in the world." For me, working in a library that prides itself on having a lot of unique materials, that suggests that bringing more information about those unique materials to Wikipedia can increase our visibility and number of users.

But imagine a future (as many people do erroneously) where every published book is available online (that's not going to happen anytime soon due to legal issues): What does Wikipedia offer to the community library made up of best sellers and books that can be easily purchased on Amazon?

If I remember correctly, Sue made the point that these libraries have the opportunity to engage the community, to be a place where community history and society is fostered and researched, and made to engage its residents. Sue seemed to be well-informed about current library thinking: that a physical library is more than a place of reading, but a quasi-community center, a "third space," a place where the community meets and engages one another. What better way to support your community than by writing it up on Wikipedia? :) Many people think of WP as just a repository of information, but the idea is that the editing of WP (especially done in partnership or in groups) fosters community. Those who edit WP form its own social network. (From there Sue talked about engaging under-represented groups, especially women.)

Asides from Sue's speech, several of the other library sessions I attended noted how genealogy is becoming a major pastime. (Merrilee can back me up on this!) Among several of us librarians, we spoke about having a major outreach to genealogists. (Genealogy is also one of my hobbies, so I'm familiar with some of the groups.)

This is also a great opportunity for Wikimedia. A WP outreach effort to genealogists might interest some - especially since genealogists depend greatly on libraries.

Just some thoughts.