Why and How Librarians Should Engage With Wikipedia
Title: Why and How Librarians Should Engage With Wikipedia
Speaker: Brian Kelly
Event details: The annual CILIPS (CILIP Scotland) autumn gathering.
Date and time: 13.45-14.30 on Thursday 30 October 2014
Venue: The John McIntyre Conference Centre, Edinburgh
Audience: Librarians and information professionals based in Scotland.
Abstract:
It’s a popular information resource: it’s one of the five most popular websites in the world, clocking over 21 billion hits every month. So why wouldn’t librarians engage with Wikipedia? Don’t librarians and information professionals have responsibilities to ensure that not only are they able to evaluate Wikipedia articles and advise their users but also for improving Wikipedia articles and helping their users to do this? The answer may be that traditionally Wikipedia hasn’t been regarded as a trusted online resource. Students have become aware of librarians’ concerns and have responded by using Wikipedia secretly, thus missing out on the advice and support librarians could be providing in how to make effective use of a popular resource which can complement others services when searching for resources.
Brian Kelly, the Innovation Advocate at Cetis, University of Bolton created his first Wikipedia article in 2004 and is happy to admit to using it on a regular basis. Recently he has been encouraging librarians to make use of Wikipedia, giving talks and running session at the LILAC 2014 and CILIP Wales 2014 conferences. Brian, who is an accredited Wikipedia trainer, also spoke on educational uses of Wikipedia in the UK at the first Eduwiki Serbia conference in Belgrade earlier this year.
Resources:
The slides are available on Slideshare and embedded below.
In addition a backup copy of the slides are also available on Authorstream.
UK Web Focus (Brian Kelly) 
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