Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library/About

The Wikipedia Library

About The Wikipedia Library

The Wikipedia Library is an open research hub, a place for active Wikipedia editors to gain access to the vital reliable sources that they need to do their work and to be supported in using those resources to improve the encyclopedia. We aim to make access and use of sources free, easy, collaborative and efficient.

The Wikipedia Library is run by a team of staff and global volunteers and funded by the Wikimedia Foundation. We operate on a community-organized satellite model: we administer the global project but work with local coordinators in local Wikipedia projects to help each community set up their own branch of the library. Contact us if you want a Wikipedia Library in your language or you want to help!

email: wikipedialibrary

wikimedia.org –

Twitter: @WikiLibrary –

Facebook: The Wikipedia Library

Our mission

Our motivation is addressing the biggest challenges facing information professionals today: discovery and access. For libraries and publishers, the challenge today is having their resources found and used when many students and the public start their research on Wikipedia. This puts us in a unique position where collaboration just makes sense. There's a saying in the reference world that discovery happens elsewhere. What is less often specified is that, these days, elsewhere is Wikipedia.

For our readers who often do not have free, direct, or easy access to major paywalled journals or niche archives, Wikipedia has become a ubiquitous gateway for access. Not all information is free, but most information can (and hopefully will soon be) at least summarized and cited on Wikipedia. For libraries and publishers, Wikipedia's wealth of eyeballs means that it is an unparalleled opportunity for exposure and dissemination of content.

The question we then ask is how to get the highest quality information on Wikipedia and to get our readers to dig deeply into it. After all, our goal is to make Wikipedia not an end point for research but a starting point for deeper learning.

We want Wikipedia to be a major component of a circle of research and dissemination: where librarians, academics, and publishers contribute their sources and expertise—and where Wikipedia leads its massive 500 million monthly readership back to information professionals, scholarly resources, and full texts.