The Wikipedia Library-The largest encyclopedia needs a digital library and we are building it/Introduction
Introduction
"I have always imagined that Paradise
will be a kind of library."
— Jorge Luis Borges
Wikipedia is positioned to become virtual front page of every library in the world—a ubiquitous starting point for public information gathering, a jumping off point for deeper learning—and a natural ally of libraries, in partnership to complete a virtuous circle of research and knowledge dissemination. With over 45 million articles and 40 million free images, Wikipedia is a top-5 global website: over 500,000,000 readers each month view it a total of 8,000 times per second. And Wikipedia’s readers don't stop their learning at Wikipedia articles—there are many indications that people use Wikipedia as a holistic research platform. A striking example is that Wikipedia refers the sixth most traffic to all CrossRef DOIs online.1.
The Wikipedia Library (TWL) aims to deliver library and research services to every editor and reader of the site, making possible access to the references which support the “sum of all human knowledge”. TWL is a global program supported by the Wikimedia Foundation to develop shared library infrastructure and services for Wikipedians and Wikipedia readers. We partner with scholarly publishers to increase access to research, build community-run support hubs and tools to improve reference, and reach out to libraries and librarians. The program’s focus has been to give the Wikipedia editing community of 100,000 monthly volunteers free access to paywalled research material, so they can cite reliable content and provide accessible summaries to the public in Wikipedia articles.