Guest Post: Perry Hewitt - Bringing the Cathedral to the Bazaar: Academic Content and Wikipedia - The Scholarly Kitchen

Wikipedia and JSTOR have a shared mission around greater access to information — and a strong partnership with the library community. Wikipedia’s #1Lib1Ref program is currently underway through February 3, encouraging librarians to contribute references to Wikipedia. We’re participating by putting a call to action on the JSTOR platform home page, amplifying the message through social media, and participating in local events. It’s through these and many other activities that we can have an impact in the world. I encourage academic content providers – publishers and libraries – to look for and share ways to play a larger role. Here are five ways you can support high quality scholarly content informing public discourse: Write yourself. Our community is well-positioned to contribute authoritative voices and make connections between current events and academic research. Become a Wikipedia editor, as the platform tries to attract more diverse contributors. Also, mind the gap: develop content in topic areas underrepresented in Wikipedia. One of the events we’ll be participating in during #1Lib1Ref is the New York Botanical Garden edit-a-thon focused on improving entries related to women in science. Where possible, content providers should seek rights holder consent to donate access to editors of the Wikipedia Library. Help the editors by providing access to the best secondary sources for academic research. Content providers can consider offering individual access services, like Register & Read, to provide ways for unaffiliated Wikipedia users to view content. Beyond the benefit to readers, individual access programs can help content providers understand more about usage patterns to inform content collections. Build pathways connecting reputable resources. I’ve worked in digital long enough to remember resistance to external links on public websites — it was hard for nonprofits and corporations alike to relinquish that control. Smart linking between carefully curated collections and broader user generated content sites will make quality platforms stronger by creating healthy ecosystems rather than walled gardens.