The Wikimedia and Libraries User Group was established to bring together and nurture collaboration between "natural allies" - librarians and Wikimedians.
Wikipedia and libraries are natural allies, both focusing on using reliable sources to share knowledge. Wikipedia depends on libraries for their references and reference expertise, while libraries increasingly recognize Wikipedia's role in the discovery and dissemination of content.
This user group serves to combine and multiply collaboration with libraries and librarians, from edit-a-thons hosted at libraries, to the Wiki Loves Libraries outreach campaign, to the broader institutional and publisher outreach of the Wikipedia Library, to a single forum open to all Wikimedia community members and any librarians interested in working with Wikipedia.
The first annual report covers 2017-18 and outlines the group’s achievements and activities so far. These include:
- Official recognition of the group by the Wikimedia Foundation (June 2017)
- User group get-together at Wikimania Montreal
- Two open user group meetings were held online to encourage participation from different time zones
- Participation in the global campaign #1Lib1Ref (One Librarian One Reference) (featured on this site earlier this year)
- Creation of a SWOT analysis of the library and Wikimedia intersection and landscape
- A survey identified two key group priorities:
- Engage with libraries in communities with historically low participation in Wikimedia projects
- Serve as ambassadors for the idea that Wikimedia work is business as usual in libraries by sharing case studies and communicating the benefits of engaging with Wikimedia
You can read more about the Wikimedia and Library User Group here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_and_Libraries_User_Group
ILI Speaker Nick Sheppard will be speaking about his award winning project to link research data with the Wikimedia suite of tools via editathons involving several universities (Day One, Session A105).