An Introduction to Wikipedia and Cataloguing Issues

The Glasgow Digital Library and Wikipedia In 2003, the CDLR established 'The Maxton Papers’ 'The Maxton Papers’ as part of the Glasgow Digital Library. Alan Dawson and Jane Barton decided to monitor how highly ‘The Maxton Papers’ were ranked on Google.

A Usurper! 1 st For several months, they were in 1 st position Spartacus’ page on Maxton pushed 2 nd them down into 2 nd position 3 rd Pushed into 3 rd by Wikipedia

Wikipedia was clearly important...

Potential Benefits Increased interest in information retrieval Participatory relationship between users/producers Increase visibility of your collection Ensure users provided with accurate information Encourage drive toward standardisation Engage with local/global communities Mutually beneficial arrangement

A Call for Participation “We do not believe that any resource tool can be reliable without scholarly input; this is why we so warmly welcome and invite the contributions of experts. It is a longstanding mistake to think of Wikipedia as being anti-elitist. Virtually every top Wikipedian I know is an elitist of the best sort: We love people who know what they are talking about.” Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia - Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia

PAC 2.0! Users’ experience of information seeking and retrieval is changing… Wikipedia creates a hypertext/browsing model of searching The model may be different but… Underlying purposes and goals are the same as traditional catalogues

Entry points to knowledge  Wikipedia is a good starting point for information seeking  I believe it may actually CREATE a potential user group for libraries  There is lots of overlap between Library and Web 2.0 philosophies  Provided that libraries engage with/understand the phenomenon, they can benefit from it

Complementary Philosophies? Complementary Philosophies? Wikia’s Four Organizing Principles (TCQP) – state that the future of Internet Search must be based on: Transparency - Openness in how the systems operate Community - Everyone is able to contribute in some way Quality - Significantly improve the relevancy and accuracy of search results Privacy - Must be protected

Some Familiar Categorisations Overviews of Wikipedia Featured content Lists Including - Topics and Basic Topics Glossaries Categorical Indices Alphabetical Indices And some Innovative ones… Portals Timelines

A Nod to traditional schemes Wikipedia's other broad categorical indices are: List of Dewey Decimal classes — lists the top two classes of each subject Library of Congress Classification Outline of Roget's Thesaurus — articles organised into a system based on six classes, with thousands of branches, following Roget's system

A Wikipedian explains: “From 2003, it became clear that listing articles in a topic area was an important activity, and I did a lot of that for mathematics. When categories appeared, they seemed like lists, but with different, overlapping functionality. So WP moved to lists+categories. Of course you could have a list of any kind. Some lists get removed as frivolous and not helpful. But in general both lists and categories have a navigational role. Any particular addition of a category is fallible.” - Charles R. Matthews, Editor, Wikipedia

Entry points for Libraries Entry points into the subject of Libraries/Librarians on Wikipedia: Library and Information Science Portal: This portal is a ‘featured portal’ meaning it is “regarded as being particularly useful, attractive, and well-maintained.” Topic list: Project to introduce Librarians to Wikipedia and the world of Wikipedians, and vice versa!

Exposing your collection! Create an entry for your organisation on Wikipedia, as the California Digital Library and Bodleian Library have done Allow users to find your collection by creating external links on relevant pages for example: Create a link to Maxton Papers on I.L.P article Becoming involved in improving and updating the Library and Information Science portal: LIS Portal

Forthcoming Book ‘How Wikipedia Works’ by Matthews et al. Publication date: May/June 2008 No Starch Press Ltd. By Charles R. Matthews and Phoebe Ayers, both Librarians, who sit on Wikipedia’s Arbitration Board. ISBN 10: X ISBN 13:

For the really pro-active… Use the free Wikimedia software to create a Wiki for your own collection, independent of the main Wikipedia site Get involved in the WikiLibrary Project run by Michael Sauers and others Add learning materials on Cataloguing to Wikiversity to encourage awareness of the profession Upload some text/images to Wikipedia Commons

No way to ignore it… Even if you do not wish to become an active proponent of Wikipedia, it is still a good idea to check from time to time, that links to your site, mentions of your institution or images/text taken from your collection and added to Wikipedia comply with copyright regulations.