A whole network of public libraries begins Wikipedia collaboration in Catalonia
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- 150 librarians from all over Catalonia have been trained about Wikipedia to spread it among library users.
Catalonia is an autonomous community of Spain, with its own language, culture and history. Its capital and largest city is Barcelona.
During the months of June and July 2012, 150 librarians from all over Catalonia have received training about Wikipedia so they can later inform their library users. Meanwhile, the Catalan Ministry of Culture has reprinted 1,500 copies of the Welcome to Wikipedia guide for distribution through the network of libraries.
It is a pioneering collaboration between the Catalan Ministry of Culture and Amical Viquipèdia. The partnership is based on the principle that Wikipedia, as the online door to knowledge, and libraries, as the offline door to knowledge, should work together to provide new levels of access.
Engaging librarians and library users
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Wikipedia is hugely popular, but how it works internally is a mystery for many. Amical Viquipèdia chose to demystify the inner workings of Wikipedia by organizing Wikipedia workshops for librarians in five of the main cities of Catalonia. During these workshops, librarians learned about the wiki interface and the benefits of open knowledge. They also became familiar with ongoing GLAM-Wiki projects (collaborations between the cultural sector and the Wikimedia movement) from around the world, and were taught how to edit Wikipedia. The librarians now not only understand how to contribute to Wikipedia, but also how to use it as a tool for engaging their users and to reassess their collections and local funds. These newly-trained librarians will now return to their libraries and encourage users to expand their experience by contributing knowledge acquired through their research into Wikipedia.
One of the pioneering experiments within this collaboration has been at the local library of Palafrugell, a municipality on the Costa Brava. (more…)
