The Wikipedia Library/Newsletter/March-April 2023

The Wikipedia Library

Books & Bytes

Issue 56, March–April 2023

In this issue we highlight new and renewed partnerships, access tips and tricks, a spotlight on a new library-related campaign, and, as always, a roundup of news and community items related to libraries and digital knowledge.

Partner announcements

The Wikipedia Library is announcing free, full-access, access to a new partner:

Perlego: digital online library focusing on non-fiction eBooks.

Additionally two partners whose access was expiring soon have renewed:

Brill: Dutch international academic publisher (12 months)

Edward Elgar: publisher with a strong focus on law, business and the social sciences (6 months)

See all available partners on your My Collections page. There was recently a bug affecting logging in that should now be resolved.

Access tips and tricks

You can always access your available collections via your My Collections page, and many resources are also available in the Library Search. But for resources accessible via proxy (which includes all of the Library Bundle resources that are available to all eligible users without requiring an application), there are some additional access tips and tricks that can help you get to full text from outside the Library – whether an external search engine or an on-wiki citation.

Zotero is a free open-source reference management software that can be installed as a browser extension. This allows you to automatically detect proxies and route requests.
If you have Javascript enabled in your browser, you can create a bookmark with the location javascript:void(location.href="https://wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/login?auth=production&url="+location.href) that you can click on whenever you land on a paywalled page.
For a lower-tech solution, simply paste https://wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/login?auth=production&url= in front of a URL that you want to try to access.

These solutions won't work on every link, but hopefully they can help improve your access to paywalled resources available through The Wikipedia Library.

Spotlight: EveryBookItsReader

Excerpted from Diff

The first ever iteration of the #EveryBookItsReader campaign ran from 1 to 30 April 2023. This campaign, organized by nine volunteers located in Botswana, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Catalonia-Spain, and the U.S., worked to improve and create content about books, literary works, and oral stories in Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, Wikiquotes, Wikibooks, and Wikisource. The campaign coincides with World Book Day, April 23, which is commemorated in many locations but originated in Catalonia, Spain where it is now celebrated as the Day of Books and Roses.

Millions of people benefit from information about books across Wikimedia projects. Quality Wikipedia book articles recap plots; summarize professional reviews, literary criticism, and public reception; and list awards received. Among those who benefit are the professions associated with books including authors, librarians, publishers, editors, translators, and booksellers. A quality article minimizes the investigative efforts required by readers and professionals to learn about a book. Librarians benefit when reviews are not behind paywalls, independent booksellers benefit when they can easily find book summaries, and publishers benefit when they can learn how their publications are being received around the world.

The campaign name is familiar to many librarians because it is the third law of Shiyali Ramamrita (S.R.) Ranganathan's five laws of library science, "Every book its reader". Ranganathan was a librarian and mathematician from India who proposed the five laws in 1931 – today many librarians around the world accept the five laws as the foundations of their philosophy.