Page:Wikipedia Training Manual.pdf/4

Background Information

1-About the collaboration between Wikimedia and the State Library of Queensland

Louise Denoon, Executive Manager Queensland Memory, handing over the State Library’s donation of 50,000 copyright free images to Wikimedia Australia’s Treasurer, Craig Franklin.

In 2010 Wikimedia Australia approached the State Library of Queensland (SLQ) to work collaboratively to build content in Wikimedia Commons (http://commons.wikimedia.org), the repository of images and resources that Wikipedia authors use to support their articles. The State Library agreed to share 50,000 Queensland images from its copyright free collections and as a result Wikimedia are now actively seeking content from other libraries, galleries,museums and archives, especially content from regional communities.

The State Library has a leading role in ensuring that Queensland’s documentary heritage is made accessible to all communities throughout Queensland and that each community has the opportunity to engage with its collections and create their own content. Having SLQ images on Wikipedia increases the State Library’s potential engagement on a global scale. To put this in perspective, the State Library’s images are accessible via the State Library website which received 16 million page requests in 2010-11. In comparison, Wikipedia gets an average of 300 million hits per day. In addition to wider community exposure, the Wikipedia community uses State Library’s images to illustrate their articles, their captions and article content, these are reported on to actively help describe and identify SLQ images, and this enhanced metadata will be incorporated back into the record for the item.

Wikimedia Australia benefits from the partnership by gaining access to new, reputable content through libraries and the ability to utilise this content to enhance their current articles and create new ones. Through working with Queensland’s public libraries Wikimedia Australia will get the chance to promote their product throughout the state and gain access to local knowledge and content creators, living and working in regional communities.

2 – Wikipedia: the benefits for your community

Craig Franklin, Treasurer Wikimedia Australia assisting participants from the Western Downs community at the Miles pilot of Wikipedia Training.

Wikimedia Australia is committed to growing regional Australian content within Wikipedia, and recognises that public libraries have the local knowledge and contacts required to generate the articles needed to enhance the Queensland subject coverage of Wikipedia. This approach also supports the State Library’s goal of creating a statewide distributed collection of Queensland Memory and gives regional Queensland communities a practical way of to promoting their own local history and showcasing their collections online. By creating Wikipedia articles on your local community’s stories, people and places, you have the opportunity for your content to be searchable and linked into other articles on Wikipedia, the worlds 5th most searched website. Wikipedia will also give your public library and its community the ability to promote itself on the world stage with a website that has a well known international reputation. By creating content you will also get the opportunity to partner with other similar organisations both locally and further afield. (E.g. Local museums, historical societies etc)

This training manual will give you the skills to create new articles for Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org) and enhance existing articles using images from your local collections as well as from the 50,000 images available from State Library.

By learning how to use Wikipedia you can then transfer these skills to other interested people in you’re community such as; local historians, museums, art galleries, family history groups, public librarians, teachers or anyone who has knowledge of the local community and wants to be part of one of the most searched encyclopedias in the world.