Page:ARL White Paper on Wikidata Opportunities and Recommendations.pdf/12

 Since the founding of Wikipedia in 2001, individual librarians have been involved in the project as volunteer contributors, but in the last several years, as the site has grown in prominence and reach, libraries have significantly increased their engagement and participation in Wikipedia. Recognizing Wikipedia as a highly-used source for their communities, librarians organize edit-a-thons,23 and institutions are rewriting job descriptions to encourage participation in Wikimedia projects. Some have hired Wikimedians in Residence24 or use graduate student interns or fellows to support representation of particular subjects from a diversity and equity perspective, and to enhance the visibility of their unique collections. Ease of use and familiarity of Wikipedia to library users has made it a successful platform around which to organize specific communities of interest and leverage their enthusiasm—in music, art and feminism, history, and more.25 Similarly, some expert communities, such as medicine, have organized both on- and offline edit-a-thons to ensure the quality and accuracy of Wikipedia articles.26

Libraries employ various strategies to make their collections discoverable and accessible on the web outside of traditional library discovery platforms. Such efforts have included making links to unique collections and local scholarship available in Wikipedia and other open knowledge platforms. Within the library community, a move to openly licensed metadata, open citations, and linked open data are hallmarks of a shift toward more open scholarship and infrastructure. In addition to advancing a broad mission to contribute to the public good, enhance the reputation of their institutions, and contribute to the connectedness of their scholars, such efforts have also been tied to community engagement, broadly conceived. Increasing exposure of library collections in Wikipedia has also been a critical part of advancing a diversity and equity agenda by helping to fill and address known gaps.

Linked open data (LOD) is openly sourced, commonly formatted, and interrelated. LOD breaks apart the bibliographic record into its ARL White Paper on Wikidata: Opportunities and Recommendations