Wikipedia Loves Libraries/2008 panel

This is a page for discussing ideas about collaborations between Wikimedia and libraries, particularly the ideas coming out of the panel at Wikimania 2008 called Wikimedia and libraries. Participants at the panel included Chuck Henry, director of CLIR; Sohair Wastawy, chief librarian of the Biblioteca Alexandrina, Tim Spalding, founder of Librarything; Phoebe Ayers, of the University of California, Davis; and Jakob Voss, of the GBV common library network. SJ Klein, director of community content for OLPC, moderated.

Reason

Why should libraries and the Wikimedia Foundation try to work together?

• shared missions and goals
• shared open content enhances accessibility of that content for both library patrons and users of Wikimedia
• global networks

Possible topics of discussion

• making library content accessible through Wikimedia
• sharing library data through collaborative projects
• using Wikimedia projects in libraries
• more (see questions)

Big questions

See the topics on the program page.

(please add to!)

Notes from session

• notes here

Possible next steps

Ideas for projects:

• developing materials for libraries about Wikimedia

• how to teach your patrons about these projects, materials for patrons at different kinds of libraries (public libraries, universities, etc).
• how to get involved as editors as librarians

• projects for librarians onwiki

• working with librarians to develop materials on doing (free online) research for Wikipedians. In many languages!

• working with libraries to get (free, public domain etc.) digitized materials into Wikimedia (Commons, Source)
• or, working to get links to these materials into Wikipedia

• sharing open bibliographic data

• developing an in-person/online workshop about these topics with the participants involved