Leveraging Wikimedia for increased visibility + upcoming coffee chat

A single point of access to the riches of America’s cultural heritage stewarded by libraries, archives, and museums across the nation. Ten years ago, that was the audacious founding vision of DPLA. To more fully realize that vision, DPLA has pioneered a program that connects our nation’s cultural heritage to Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia. Late last month, DPLA presented more about this work at ALA’s inaugural LibLearn X in New Orleans. 

DPLA director of community engagement Shaneé Yvette Willis and DPLA data fellow Dominic Byrd-McDevitt were joined by DPLA board chair Felton Thomas and Angela Stanley, Assistant State Librarian for Innovation and Collaboration at the Georgia Public Library Service, for a session that featured a presentation on DPLA’s recently expanded work to make cultural heritage artifacts accessible on Wikipedia and how this work can help dramatically increase the visibility of library collections. 

We were delighted to interact with an audience that included many folks that were new to DPLA and by the rich conversation that followed, covering topics from Wikimedia community dynamics to professional development opportunities for librarians and historians interested in becoming Wikipedia editors. We send our thanks to Angela Stanley, who detailed how Digital Library of Georgia has translated existing investments and the bridge DPLA provides to Wikipedia into big visibility impacts for Georgia’s public libraries–more than 1.5 million content views per month, with minimal time investment.

Our ALA session wasn’t recorded, but the slides are available to view here. If you’d like to learn more about how to get involved in our Wikimedia work, you can find out more here or here, or join our monthly office hours. We also invite you to join us at the upcoming DPLA network Coffee Chat, hosted by our Wikimedia Working Group, on April 27 at 1p ET, which will be a casual conversation about the latest on our Wikimedia work and how to get involved. 

DPLA’s Wikimedia work is supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Wikimedia Foundation.