#Wikipedia and libraries #WLIC2016 @GLAMWiki

I'm attending a session on Wikipedia and Libraries at the IFLA World Library and Information Congress in Columbus, USA. It started with a presentation from Alex Stinson and Jake Orlowitz (Wikimedia Foundation/Wikipedia Library, United States). This presentation is at https://goo.gl/DPDqUQ and so I won't give a detailed account of it, but here are some main points.
They indicated the scale of wikipedia in terms of editors, content and reach. They mentioned some apps including the medical app. The speakers stressed the importance of references and verification of information, and described how they were trying to ensure that wikipedia entries included references to articles behind a paywall (i.e. they wanted to make sure that articles from priced journals were not excluded as evidence). They highlighted that "50% to 90% of physicians use Wikipedia" (as a starting point) and there have been 10,000 downloads of the medical app (which is also available in Chineses, Farsi and Arabic).
The speakers also mentioned the 1Lib1Ref campaign. Finally, they talked about some specific Wikipedia projects and picked out some points from: Todorinova, L. (2015). Wikipedia and undergraduate research trajectories. New Library World, 116 (3/4), 201-212. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/NLW-07-2014-0086

Two draft discussion papers were prepared for this session, both of which will be publicised as consultation documents. The presentation I linked to above i.e. https://goo.gl/DPDqUQ also includes both the presentations that were made, which picked out key points from the papers. The academic library presentation was made by Vicki McDonald (State Library of New South Wales, Australia), who talked about how her own library had contributed to, and used, Wikipedia. This included creating a manual for Wikipedia editing. This page includes a link to the training manual https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/State_Library_of_New_South_Wales

The consultation papers can already be downloaded, but there isn't a consultation mode yet. One paper is on public libraries http://2016.ifla.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/08/112-IFLAWikipediaandPublicLibrariesDiscussionDRAFT.pdf and Wikipedia and one on academic and research libraries and Wikipedia http://2016.ifla.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/08/112-IFLAWikipediaAcademicandResearchLibrariesDiscussioDRAFT.pdf. Both of them describe the different kinds of projects and activities that libraries might adopt using Wikipedia, with existing examples.