Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library/Rationale

Few goals are more important than getting Wikipedians the assets they need to write densely researched, informative articles. As part of that quest, we have built a relationship with HighBeam research, resulting in the donation of 1000 free 1-year accounts for select Wikipedia editors--a $200,000 value to the community. Partnerships with Credo, Questia, and JSTOR have also been added. The dream of the Wikipedia Library is to create a single point of access for our best and most dedicated members to have access to any and all of the highest quality research resources in the world. We need to reward our community leaders, and one way to do that is to simply get full entry to the best databases available at absolutely no cost to them.

This is not merely a way to 'get free stuff'. Retention of our most active editors is a serious concern, and providing them (rewarding them) with access to proprietary research databases is one way to keep them happy, active, and content.

The concrete, deliverable outcomes of this project are as follows:

• Implement a single sign-on protocol that is compatible with most of the research databases we will be seeking partnerships with
• Turn the existing three relationships we have with content providers into our first three members of The Wikipedia Library
• Fully execute the integration of their systems with our single sign-on protocol
• Form new relationships with other content providers and offer them the assistance they need to participate in the library.

In a broad brush, we want to create a central gateway for partnerships with university libraries and publishers through which the most active and experienced Wikipedia editors can access the best available scholarship. There are precedents for this type of community-corporation relationship. Programs have already been started with Credo Reference, HighBeam, and JSTOR to give approved editors access to proprietary content. These programs are a great start, but they are handicapped by the fact that they are separate and limited. Editors have to apply to each one individually, and the account approval and management needs to be overseen for every program in a time-consuming process of organization, dissemination, and maintenance.

These programs are like having 10 different keys to 10 different buildings with 10 different property managers. The idea of The Wikipedia Library is to create a central access point, with a single gate, behind which editors would be free to roam in and out of multiple paywalled sites.

For questions, comments, or other ideas, please add to the talk page. Project organization is being spearheaded by User:Ocaasi through an Individual Engagement Grant from the Wikimedia Foundation. He can be reached at wikiocaasiyahoo.com.

Potential for growth

The impact of The Wikipedia Library initially serves only the 1000 or so editors who would have free access to the library. However, 1000 dedicated Wikipedians might make hundreds of thousands of edits. Improving articles with high quality sources is a foundational exercise and could vastly improve articles that are read by millions of people a year. There is also the opportunity to bridge a gap between Wikipedia and the for-profit research community. Simply, those organizations can be a tremendous ally in fulfilling our core mission. They are good people to know and even better people to have as friends and partners.

Provided the technical implementation of single sign-on is successful, The Wikipedia Library can and should grow over time. There is no limit to the number of organizations or institutions who could participate. Indeed, we might one day face the problem of how to curate the available resources so that editors can find the best resource they need out of the multitude of available sources. In other words, The Wikipedia Library may one day need an actual librarian!

Although the current relationships we have are with English-language sources, there is no limit to integrating non-English resources into the library. Also, a good number of editors across the globe can benefit from English language sources, which although not ideal for their community, are often some of the highest quality reference works that exist.

Demonstrating impact

Demonstrating impact of this project is partly a matter of counting the number of resource providers who sign on. It is also a matter of analyzing the number of references that are added to Wikipedia over time. By comparing periods of time before the existence of the library with periods afterwards, and by normalizing the addition of references with respect to the growth of edits and editors, we could potentially conduct a sophisticated multivariate analysis to demonstrate that there is a quantifiable increase in the number of references added to Wikipedia beyond what one would expect from natural growth. A far simpler approach would just be to survey Wikipedia Library users and ask them how often they use it and how many references they have added because of it.

Mutual benefit

Principles

• Access to high quality published sources enhances the encyclopedia's mission, improves our reliability, and enhances the efficiency of vital research.
• A variety of free sources are available in local libraries, university libraries and through Google (search, news, archives, books, scholar).
• Free and universally accessible sources are always preferable to use on Wikipedia.
• Many sources are not free or not accessible, requiring one to be in physical proximity to a building or have a subscription to view content.
• Many sources provides paid access to a variety of critical research that Wikipedians would find useful in their regular content work.
• These sources are often exensive and would be unaffordable to a majority of volunteer editors who work on the encyclopedia.
• A collaboration between these publishers and Wikipedia would be mutually beneficial.

What's in it for Wikipedia?

• Access to thousands of publications, some of which are not indexed by Google or only provide an abstract without paying a subscription fee
• Enhanced community relations with a provider of education resources
• Increasing precedent for similar collaborations with research databases
• Another tool in the community's and editors' bag for improving articles

What's in it for publishers?

• Opportunity to improve the content on the largest encyclopedia in the world
• Visibility within the community as having helped out with an essential aspect of site operations
• In line with policies, promotion of this collaboration
• Direct links within references back to their resources
• Greater awareness among readers who follow links that these resources exists and provide a useful service

What it's not

• A formal partnership or contractual relationship
• A formal endorsement of a particular sources over other similar and competing research services
• An agreement to advertise the resource's services beyond what is normally done for the use of any source
• An agreement to use the resources where free versions of the same publications are available elsewhere