Wikipedia and Special Collections: A Special Relationship

Bob Kosovsky, Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts

Music Division - New York Public Library

Preconference of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of ACRL / ALA June 25, 2013

• Over 4.2 million articles in English Wikipedia• 286 Wikipedias by language• Over 30 million articles in all Wikipedias • 6th most-used website on Earth1

• 365 million readers worldwide• 8th most-used website in the United States• “Most popular reference work on the Internet” 2

1 Alexa.com, accessed 10 June 20132 “Wikipedia” in Wikipedia, footnotes 5-9, accessed 10 June 2013

Editors of Wikipedia• As of November 2011, 31.7 million registered

users; 270,000 active any given month

For English Wikipedia (figures as of April 2013)

• 33,511 active Wikipedians• 3.3 million edits per month• 910 new articles per day

Source: http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm#wikipedians

Google’s Knowledge Graph uses data from Wikipedia

Beta620.nytimes.com – the NY Times’ website for experimentation

Even Birdopedia is derived in part from Wikipedia

“Verifiability, not truth”

Among Wikipedia editors, this is often phrased as "verifiability, not truth" to express the idea that the readers, not the encyclopedia, are ultimately responsible for checking the truthfulness of the articles and making their own interpretations.

Wikipedia:Core Content Policies• Neutral point of view• Verifiability• No original research

• “…all material in Wikipedia must be attributable to a reliable, published source. Articles may not contain any new analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a position not clearly advanced by the sources.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Core_content_policies

My user talk page as of August 30, 2006

Digital project: creating metadata for thousands of songs. I wanted to include performance information for the 1891 musical “Wang” by composer Woolson Morse.

Della Fox appeared in several musicals of the 1890s, including two composed by Woolson Morse

The universe of Linked Data: DBpedia (Wikipedia in data format) at the center

Drexel 4257 – “John Gamble, his booke”

Music Division’s Permission File

→

Linked article

Linked article

Drexel 4257 had been established as an corporate authority heading

...therefore was present in VIAF...

…and now in Wikipedia: VIAF link in the article on Drexel 4257

If it’s

“Did You Know...?” for August 16, 2012

“Catalogs are not the methods by which the community learns about things”

-- Katherine Reagan, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University

The Wikipedia article on Special collections – only ONE citation!

From the article on Special Collections:

There is currently no article on hidden collections. How can we highlight the issues with hidden collections if it’s not possible to find a definition and explanation of the phrase?

There is no Wikipedia article on G. Thomas Tanselle

Behind the articles, Wikipedia is also a social network dedicated to a mission – don’t be shy asking for help

The universe of linked data: DBpedia (Wikipedia in data format) at the center

some"If Wikipedia is good enough for the Archivist of the United States, maybe it should be good enough for you” – David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States

Thank you!