On 5/24/07, Fred Bauder fredbaud@waterwiki.info wrote:

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-----Original Message----- From: Lars Aronsson [mailto:lars@aronsson.se] Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2007 08:59 AM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Using Wikipedia to Extend Digital Collections

In the current issue of D-Lib Magazine, a web journal for reasearch into digital libraries, Ann M. Lally and Carolyn E. Dunford at University of Washington Libraries describe how they have inserted external links into (the English) Wikipedia articles as a way to promote use of their library's website of digitized material.

"Using Wikipedia to Extend Digital Collections", http://dlib.org/dlib/may07/lally/05lally.html

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

I think this is a legitimate extension of our purpose, making information available. I would encourage them if they are encountered.

Fred

They have been encountered :) They are great people, really enthusiastic about the project and about Wikipedia, and this is a good paper as well -- it has actual data about how adding the links drove up their traffic. Intuitively obvious, I suppose, but it's nice to be able to have something to point at. The links, it should be pointed out, are to digitized special collections of primary source material -- such as photographs from WWII or about people from Seattle; they are historical collections only, not trying to sell anything.

The other nice thing about this paper is it gives very explicit, step by step descriptions of what they did, with advice -- a good resource for your local library or museum people if they want to try something similar.

-- phoebe