Page:Librarians as Wikipedians - From Library History to “Librarianship and Human Rights”.pdf/2

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Wikipedia: Need for Librarians as Contributors

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia built collaboratively using wiki software, is the most visited reference site on the web. Only 270 librarians identify as Wikipedians of 21,431,799 Wikipedians with named accounts. This needs to change. Understanding Wikipedia is essential to teaching information literacy and editing Wikipedia is essential to foster successful information-seeking behavior. Librarians who become skilled Wikipedians will maintain the centrality of librarianship to knowledge management in the 21st century—especially through active participation in crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing is the online participation model that makes use of the collective intelligence of online communities for specific purposes in this case creating and editing articles for Wikipedia.

I began my career as a librarian in pre-digital times when the Guide to Reference Books was called Winchell. As a young librarian I conscientiously reviewed new editions of reference resources and annotated my copy of Winchell until the next edition was released—a rather big event in the librarian calendars of the last century. Since 2000 the Guide has only been published online. Yet the special expertise of librarians honed by our deep understanding

Kathleen de la Peña McCook is distinguished university professor, University of South Florida, School of Information in Tampa where she teaches the “History of Libraries,” “Public Librarianship” and “Human Rights and Librarians.” She is a member of the Progressive Librarians Guild Coordinating Committee.

KEYWORDS: Crowdsourcing; Digital natives; Florida libraries; Gender gap; Human rights; Information-seeking behavior; Information literacy; Knowledge management; Librarian biography; Librarians as Wikipedians; Library education; Library history; University of South Florida, School of Information; Wikipedia.