The Wikipedia Library-The largest encyclopedia needs a digital library and we are building it/For Editors: A Wikipedia Library Card
For Editors: A Wikipedia Library Card
"When I got my library card, that’s when my life began."
— Rita Mae Brown
The founding mission of The Wikipedia Library is to connect content editors on Wikimedia projects with the reliable sources they needed to develop articles—to ensure that the content is supported by the highest quality sources, and to open up topics not covered by locally available or free online references.
One Iranian recipient of TWL access from JSTOR described:
- "Things changed when the international sanctions against Iran expanded and included banking transactions. Subscription fees could not be paid and the growing difficulties reduced my motivation to work on Wikipedia for free. However, thanks to the Wikipedia Library, I received JSTOR access, which incorporates Iranian Studies; this new access allowed me to continue my work on articles like Kelidar, the longest Persian novel.
- Subscription access is a must for Persian Wikipedia editors, not just due to the lack of reliable sources in Iran or Afghanistan, but because of the systematic bias and censorship that is so prevalent among books published in these countries. I even consider the Wikipedia Library a helpful project to counter the systemic bias in English Wikipedia itself. While every river or hill in North America or Europe has its own article, many vital issues concerning developing countries have not been covered. By getting global editors like me free access to rich digital libraries, we will be even more encouraged to write decent articles about our culture and geography in your language."9
Serving individual editors, "arming them with reliable sources", has long been an aspiration for The Wikipedia Library. This partnership model has grown to nearly 70 publishers and aggregators—including EBSCO, SAGE, Taylor & Francis, Elsevier, Oxford University Press, and Project MUSE—providing access to over 80,000 unique periodicals and a greater number of books, to thousands of editors for a year per partner per signup.
The standard distribution process for this access has not been elegant. It has required editors to apply individually for each partnership they want access to, for applications to be vetted against account activity and experience criteria, to be approved and processed individually by dozens of coordinators, and for per-editor access codes to be delivered or accounts created by the publisher such that they expire one year after activation. This time-consuming process involved unnecessary duplication of effort and inefficiency in workflows, resulting in a multi-week wait between application and receipt of access. While this is certainly better than no access at all, we recognised quickly that there was obvious scope for improvement.
In an effort to solve these problems, TWL is currently developing a Wikipedia Library Card platform (https://wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org/) to streamline application processes for database access and to deliver an access experience more similar to that of research libraries. It provides a centralized interface through which editors can apply for access to resources and volunteers can process those applications. This central platform greatly improves the efficiency of the access grant process—projections suggest an eventual wait time of only a few days rather than a few weeks for most resources.
The Library Card system supports a wider variety of resource provision modes than previously available under TWL. The application process is streamlined and can be partially or fully automated, depending on the approach preferred by the publisher. Foremost, it can support a proxy-based authentication system with single sign-on for users. This will rapidly improve access to research for content editors.
An instantaneous access system is also being developed called the Library Card Bundle. In this iteration, access is approved through the system automatically rather than manually, so it can be granted on an as-needed basis to tens of thousands of editors instead of just hundreds at a time. The bundle approach solves the problem of users requesting access to a source simply to read a few specific articles rather than long-term research in the topic area. Now, instead of occupying one of a limited number of slots for an entire year, a far greater number of users can simply gain access to what they need when it is needed.
Once this initial phase of authorization and development is completed, the next step is to integrate additional digital library services. A key component of the system will be a web-scale discovery service to allow users to find content across all publishers from a single search box. The service will index, in full text wherever possible, the resources available through the various partnerships The Wikipedia Library has established, as well as open access content. Instead of visiting a series of individual publisher or database sites to search for resources, editors will be able to search centrally and discover most of the available sources on their topic of interest. Link resolvers will allow users to move seamlessly from search to the full text, further improving search efficiency. Integrated online reference support can also be delivered through the proposed system to assist users in locating content relevant to their research, and potentially to provide practical learning opportunities for library and information students in the model of the Internet Public Library.
The Library Card system also has the potential to greatly enhance the acquisitions process used by The Wikipedia Library. Currently, major publishers are highly requested whereas still-valuable alternatives with a lower profile are often overlooked. A discovery service can enhance the usage of niche publications by exposing them to unfamiliar users. Implementation of a discovery service generally increases full text downloads of indexed publications.10 An automatically generated A-Z list will educate readers on which databases index a particular journal of interest, allowing them to be better informed on which partnerships they would want to request. This would replace a manually curated list, which is cumbersome to search and update.
The Wikipedia Library Card is a novel and challenging solution. It is effectively a global library, open to qualified Wikipedia editors from any country or region on the planet, and without any daunting subscription costs.