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volunteer-developed Citation Hunt tool (https://tools.wmflabs.org/citationhunt), which automatically isolates sentences flagged with a “citation needed” tag, and presents them to the user for fixing. This simple workflow fostered significant participation rates in both English and other language Wikipedias.
#1lib1ref was conceived in fall 2015 by TWL project manager Alex Stinson, who recognized the potential of Citation Hunt. He took the functionality and connected it to an opportunity: other GLAM communities had not yet developed a way to celebrate the upcoming 15-year anniversary of Wikipedia in January 2016. Inspired by the changing conversation about the role of Wikipedia in research and among libraries, the TWL team developed a campaign with the goal to develop increased literacy and understanding among librarians about how Wikipedia’s content is created and improved through verifiability, while generating awareness that other libraries are taking advantage of Wikipedia as an environment in which to further public programming. "Give Wikipedia the gift of a citation. Because facts matter #1lib1ref" was seen widely throughout social media platforms.
The campaign’s first two years have proven to be quite successful. In 2016, there were over 29,000 views of the campaign page, coverage of the event in over 50 different venues (blogs, professional newsletters, etc.), over 1,100 Twitter posts using the hashtag, and at least 1,232 edits to Wikimedia projects. Though 1,232 citations barely scratches a dent in the number of citations needed for Wikipedia (English Wikipedia has over 300,000 “citation needed” tags), it did generate broad interest.17