On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 2:34 PM, Klein,Max <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello, > I am Max Klein new Wikipedian in Residence with OCLC. My dedications for > the next few months will be in trying to bridge some divide Wikimedia > and Libraries. > > In response to Bob's insight that "GLAM formulation is Wikimedia's own," > and that "*librarians* in museums, many I've encountered see themselves > as part of the special libraries sphere." I think it very important that > Wikimedians start to treat Librarians in a more nuanced fashion, and > acknowledge their distinctions. (Just as I'm sure those Wikimedia > Commons contributors would not like to be bundled with Wikipedia > Copy-editors.) The title of GLAM as an package of institutional types > was probably necessary at some early stage, but now it doesn't serve us > as well because Museums and Libraries will need their own tailored > approaches to integration. > > What are those levels of integration? So far we've seen work from > Wikipedians in Residence at museums creating and editing actual pages > based on the housed works. That model will work to some extent for > Libraries that have special collections. For other less specialist > libraries, that model would result in a lot of WIRs just twiddling > thumbs. > > That is not to say that there would be no purpose in collaboration. Alex > Hinojo (a Catalan WIR) informed me of his idea of *Librarians as > Wikipedia Ambassadors*. I'm interested to get a feeling from the > Librarian community about how excited they would be to trained in > Wikipedia Literacy as a trainers themselves to their patrons? From my > experience in the Education Program (training students) the hard parts > were explaining the technical knowledge, and then a crash course in > Information Literacy. Librarians are already extremely information > literate in what would qualify as reliable sources, so they are actually > more natural fits to be in person contacts for Wikipedia help. This is > approach is more "teach a man to fish," (or "teach a man to teach > fishing," rather) than the classic approach, and relies on the > willingness of Librarians. > > What are the feelings on this proposed paradigm?
This has actually already been my experience in helping to coordinate the Wikipedia Ambassadors in the NY/Northeast US university region, where we have been actively recruiting librarians, and have seen an outsize positive influence from them. Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos) _______________________________________________ Libraries mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/libraries
