La bibliothèque Wikipédia/Guide de mise en place d'une nouvelle branche
The Wikipedia Library
Global Branch Setup Guide
The Wikipedia Library (TWL) is an open research hub, a place for editors to find and do research more easily and collaboratively. TWL successfully began as an Individual Engagement Grant-funded project and has grown over the last 4 years to serving over 4000 editors, mostly English-speaking. Every language community can build on this experience and adapt the Wikipedia Library model to their own community's needs. Many new branches will start small, grow in different directions than English TWL, and innovate in their approach. That's good!
While each community branch will be unique, you are not alone in setting it up. The Wikipedia Library has a team of staff at the Wikimedia Foundation who are experienced in and ready to help you with setup, communications, outreach, organization, management, metrics, planning, and building a network of collaborators. We are here to help.
We encourage you to work as a team and grow together. Meanwhile, it's a good idea to have at least one point person or primary contact in your community to facilitate the setup process.
This guide will help you:
- Discover existing resources, projects, and relationships related to research and the libraries on your wiki
- Inform your community about TWL, and learn how it can best help the community get better access to reliable sources
- Get people signed up to help you implement a TWL branch on your wiki
- Set up relevant pages for library services
- Initiate one of the Wikipedia Library programs with the community you have inspired
If you get stuck or have questions at any point, please contact one of the TWL organizers:
- Jake Orlowitz, Lead, User: Ocaasi (WMF), jorlowitz
wikimedia.org - Alex Stinson, Project Manager, User: Astinson (WMF), astinsonwikimedia.org
- Patrick Earley, Community Advocate, User:PEarley (WMF), pearleywikimedia.org
- Nikkimaria, Head of Volunteer Coordination, User:Nikkimaria
- Jake Orlowitz, Lead, User: Ocaasi (WMF), jorlowitz
You can also learn more and get your questions answered at our FAQ!
Vue d’ensemble
Here's a brief outline of what you'll do as part of this process:
- STEP ONE: Explore - Visit and browse through an existing, well-developed Wikipedia Library branch. Notice the different types of resources and projects.
- STEP TWO: Self-inventory - Create a page on-wiki where you can start to collect all of the resources you find that already exist in your community.
- STEP THREE: Community Consultation - Gather feedback at your main community portal about other resources in your community (that you may have missed in the self-inventory) and most importantly, ask which resources your community would like to have. Let interested editors sign up to help and offer a space for general discussion about starting a library branch.
- STEP FOUR: Making basic pages - Create an on-wiki "home" and a few important pages to help your branch run smoothly from the start. As you make these basic pages, you will also create a "navigation template" to help keep your pages organized and help editors find them.
- STEP FIVE: Enlisting Volunteer Support - Enlist participants from the community consultation and others to volunteer for specific tasks and projects.
If this feels like too much for you, check out our even simpler TWL Light Branch setup guide, which is especially designed for smaller or less active wikis.
Outcome
- You just got an overview of the process. Congrats!
Terminé
Step 1: Explore an existing Wikipedia Library
Take 30–60 minutes and just go exploring through these Wikipedia Library pages. There's no goal here except to become familiar and get your ideas flowing for your own community; you can adapt what you see here to your own needs and add additional features that may be unique to your community. Many of these projects you won't end up needing (at least not yet)--they're just here to give you ideas.
These links link to English language projects; if you are interested in exploring other branches, check out their pages via their global branch pages.
- Basics
- Access partnerships
- Doing research
- Outreach and communications
Outcome
- You are now familiar with an example of a working Wikipedia Library branch. Good work! Terminé
Step 2: Inventory your community
Learn and record what your community already does, then find out what it needs and wants most. Use these questions, first by yourself, and then in an open discussion with the community to learn as much as you can before you get started.
Questions
Here are some questions to guide you through an inventory of existing pages and projects in your community. If you don't have one of these, or any of these, don't worry. That's what this guide is here to help you create!
- Do you have a place where editors trade or share online resources?
- Do you have a program that buys or sends books to editors?
- Do you have collaborations with journals or research databases to give editors access?
- Do you have a program digitizing book/journal catalogs or book/journal text?
- Do you have a WikiProject or other gathering place for librarians and reference professionals?
- Do you have a references desk for people to ask research questions?
- Do you have pages listing available free/open access resources?
- Do you have a community outreach portal for librarians, archivists, or GLAM professionals?
- Do you run events at libraries or with librarians, such as editathons, training sessions, or editing classes?
- Do you have relationships with universities or university libraries through education programs in your region?
- Do editors give talks or presentations to library professionals at GLAM or academic conferences and events?
- Do you have any other relevant resources or projects not mentioned above?
- Which journals, books, publishers, programs, projects, pages, partnerships, databases, resources, or services would be most useful to your community?
Outcome
The goal of this process is to compile:
- A page on your wiki listing these resources Terminé
- A global branch page (see sample) linking to this inventory and with space for recording future branch development
Step 3: Consult your community
Your next step is to present to and engage with your community to help you better understand Branch opportunities:
- An introduction to what the Wikipedia Library is and does, how it works, and why it's useful
- Which library resources already exist in your community
- Any resources you missed in the self-inventory
- What library materials, resources, or services would the community like to have?
- Interested editors who would like to be involved in working on your Wikipedia Library
- Whether there is general support for the project, or other comments and concerns
Consider linking your initial self-inventory page to help the community understand what you have identified already.
For each of these resources you want to learn:
- whether the resource is being actively used by editors
- which resources are not being maintained even though there is demand for them
- who are the key editors active in supporting these services online
- who are the key editors active in outreach and collaboration with libraries
Listen for broader trends as well:
- Does community interest in particular types of resources indicate other library needs on your wiki?
- Consider: What will be the most low-effort but high-impact services?
- Where is the greatest interest and need for reference support?
- Which already established initiatives would benefit from more invested time and energy?
You can use the following pre-written message below to start that conversation in your community on a highly-visited page or project where people gather. Make sure to invite relevant active editors and groups to participate.
Post a localized version of this: Wikipedia Library Community Consultation Message
Keep a close eye on the discussion and encourage participants to share details or explain comments (but don't challenge every criticism). If you run into concerns about Open Access vs. paywalled resources, this guide may be helpful.
When the conversation has ended, in a separate document or wiki page, summarize the consensus from the conversation, and create a prioritized list of the kinds of resources where the community provided good ideas from the conversation. This new prioritized list and summary of consensus will act as a plan for growing your library branch.
Outcomes
- Completed community conversation Terminé
- Report back to WMF about: the level of interest and offers to help, the highest priorities for projects Terminé
- Improve and expand the list of existing library resources Terminé
- Start to find a few volunteers to help setup and support your Branch Terminé
Step 4: Set up pages
Your Wikipedia Library branch is now ready to set up. This involves copying, translating, and creating some pages where people will find and use your Wikipedia Library’s resources. If you think one of these isn't needed in your community, it's ok to leave it out, and if you think your library would be best with only a few of these pages, feel free to focus just on them.
If this feels like too much for you, check out our even simpler Light Branch setup guide, which is especially designed for smaller or less active wikis.
As you set up these pages, make sure to engage the interested community members identified in the community consultation. Volunteers can help with translation, setting up pages, and communicating use of those pages.
Basic pages
- Main - Your Main homepage links to your library projects and services (feel free to change the order)
- setup kit: The Wikipedia Library/Kit/Main
- example: en:w:Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library
- setup kit: The Wikipedia Library/Kit/Main
- About - This is a basic information page that describes your Wikipedia Library Branch - why you do it, how you do it, and who you are
- setup kit: The Wikipedia Library/Kit/About
- Journals - A place for editors to get access or request access to paywalled/closed access ($) journals and databases
- setup kit: The Wikipedia Library/Kit/Journals
- Share - A space for Wikipedians to exchange resources they already have access to, sometimes called a Resource Exchange
- Setup kit: The Wikipedia Library/Kit/Share
- Community Library- a space for Wikipedians to share information about their own access to hard-to access materials
- Setup kit: The Wikipedia Library/Kit/Community library
- example: English Wikipedia
- Setup kit: The Wikipedia Library/Kit/Community library
- Free and open resources - This page lists free or Open Access resources and databases, and outlines how editors can do research while supporting more open content
- Reference desk - This page is for people to get help with a research question
- setup kit: The Wikipedia Library/Kit/Reference_desk
- example: en:w:Wikipedia:Reference_desk
- setup kit: The Wikipedia Library/Kit/Reference_desk
- Coordinators - This is a place for Coordinators and volunteers to create profiles and to get new volunteers to sign up to help
- Navigation box - This is a helpful box template that collects all the links to Library pages in one place
- Notes
- Feel free to change the text on the pages to fit your community, cultural, linguistic, regional, and legal environment. They are a good starting point, but you do not have to copy them exactly. Make them your own!
- On your home wiki, the URLs should leave out /kit/ and be located in the "Wikipedia:" namespace (not the main article namespace), for example 'Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library/Books". For the home page, you can take off "/main/", like "Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library".
- Make sure that in addition to translating all the text, you also update all of the wikilinks on each page to target the correct page names.
- It's a good idea to create an index at "Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library/Index" so you can have a list of all of your pages.
- You don't have to name your page "The Wikipedia Library"; either translate that into your language, or adapt a name that makes sense for your community.
- Note that editors sharing sources may assume some fair use rights; if your community's culture, policies or legal environment does not support such fair use, modify the advice where needed.
- Journal sign up notes
- Once the library is functioning and active, coordinators will likely have to create archives to store old requests
- We are trying to keep journal signup criteria (1 year and 500 edits) consistent across all projects
If you get stuck or have questions, please contact one of the TWL organizers:
- Jake Orlowitz User: Ocaasi (WMF), jorlowitzwikimedia.org
- Alex Stinson User: Astinson (WMF), astinsonwikimedia.org
- Patrick Earley User:PEarley (WMF), pearleywikimedia.org
- Nikkimaria User:Nikkimaria
Outcome
- You now have a group of core pages needed to run your library branch. Looking good! Terminé
- You built a navigation template which collects your library's pages together Terminé
- You began collaborating with your volunteer team Terminé
Step 5: Enlist volunteer support
Branches run best with a team! Once you've got your basic pages set up, announce your branch to your community and ask others to join in and help out. At first a small team will likely handle many roles at once, but over time it helps to give volunteers an active and clear role to play in the branch.
Some potential roles for volunteers include:
- project organizer: plan the big picture, guide volunteers, start experiments, and lead programs
- account coordinator: help manage a specific donation by screening applicants, distributing accounts, and troubleshoot any issues
- outreach coordinator: connect to university libraries, archives, and other GLAM institutions
- metrics coordinator: analyze the usage of sources, especially sources that were donated
- partner coordinator: contacts potential publisher partners to ask for donations
- research coordinator: run reference services onwiki to help people do research and get answers
- technical coordinator: build tools and templates to support research and access
- communications coordinator: share stories on social media, blogs, mailing lists, and newsletters
How do you find volunteers?
- Ask! Put out a call for volunteers at a forum in your community, like English Wikipedia's Village Pump, or in a newsletter
- Look for active members of your community who write articles or helping others write articles
- Talk to previous recipients of Wikipedia Library resources - they will be aware of the library's value
- Post messages at places in your community where librarians or people doing research gather to help each other
- Bring in participants from the previous community consultation
Outcome
- You announced your new branch to your community! Terminé
- You now have a core group of volunteers to support your branch! Terminé
What's next?
There's no single best way to run your Wikipedia Library. We do have a few thoughtful suggestions about how to be really effective.
- Start small: a program grows best over time
- Treat projects like experiments: evaluate and improve them regularly
- Don't try to do everything at once: it's often best to focus on one or two projects at a time
- Don't try to do everything by yourself: a project needs a core team to grow and to last
- Learn from what others have done before you: ask for help from people with experience doing what you are trying to do
- Do what works in your community: every community has different needs so your library doesn't need to look exactly like anyone else's
- Make allies outside of Wikipedia: connect to other librarians, reference, and cultural professionals to build a real network
- Talk: regular communication is key to preventing problems and making sure little misunderstandings don't turn into big issues
- Look for impact: keep an eye on the growth of your projects by counting the activity and trying to measure the outcomes of your work
- Get regular feedback from editors: treat your editors like partners by asking them what they need and want and responding to their ideas
- Share your successes: don't be shy about showing off the great work you're doing
- Grow through partnerships: see the world as full of opportunities for mutual benefit
- Complete the circle: expand Wikipedia's key place in the cycle of research access and resource discovery
The pages you setup will hopefully do a lot of good in your community. If you are seeing growth and seeing more opportunities, you might be ready to start setting up other projects. Here are some ideas for what and how to implement them. You might invent your own!