Build relationships among editors, librarians, and cultural heritage professionals
Facilitate research for Wikipedians and readers
Promote broader open access in publishing and research.
TWL advances these efforts through a global branch strategy: 22 different Wikipedia language projects now have TWL branches, including French, German, Arabic, and Finnish.5 Global efforts are driven by a core team of staff, contractors, and over 100 volunteer coordinators, which allows insights from one branch to be shared with others.
The Wikipedia Library works in tandem with the broader GLAM-Wiki movement (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums). The budding community of practice around Wikipedia and Libraries is a sign of a radical shift in the nature of authority and knowledge production: from scholarly credentials and expertise to literate evaluation of myriad references, from individual authors imbued with the authority of the academy to diverse crowds of contributors with varying levels of expertise. Three reflections illustrate the profound transition in which Wikipedia has come to be seen as an essential part of the information and research literacy ecosystem:
- "Wikipedia is increasingly becoming the go-to reference resource for the newest generation of students… Librarians and faculty should help remove the stigma associated with Wikipedia by embracing this Website and its imperfections as a way to make information literacy instruction valuable for the twenty-first-century student."6
- "When asked to contribute to a wiki—a space that's highly public and where the audience can respond by deleting or changing your words—college students snapped to attention, carefully checking sources and including more of them to back up their work… Instead of blindly consuming the content, they understand where the research comes from and how it gets there. In the past, we've told them not to use Wikipedia. That's insane. Rather than saying, 'It doesn't have a place in the academy,' let's explain to students how it can be used as a tertiary resource. It's not the end-all and be-all of research, but it's incredibly useful."7