University Library is leading the Central Indiana Wikipedia Partnership, a group of cultural organizations working to improve representation of Indiana’s heritage on Wikipedia. With generous funding from the Central Indiana Community Foundation’s (CICF) Library Fund provided to University Library, the Partnership’s main aim will be to increase the capacity of central Indiana institutions to engage with Wikipedia by working together on programs such as staff training, contributing digital collections images to Wikimedia Commons, holding public editing events, and more. Founding partners include the Indiana State Library, Indianapolis Public Library, Conner Prairie, and Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site.
Scholarly Communication Librarian Jere Odell leads a Wikipedia event at the Indiana State Library
University Library’s role in this partnership aligns with its ongoing dedication to preserving, promoting, and celebrating Indiana's rich cultural history, and it is representative of a university that has done just that for more than one hundred years. “There are so many reasons to love this project,” observed Kristi Palmer, Herbert Simon Family Dean of University Library. “The CICF Library Fund has long supported the digitization of historic collections from Indianapolis cultural heritage organizations and now those vast collections are being reused, applied, woven into articles about Indiana and beyond. Through democratization of information creation engrained in Wikipedia and this project, we witness what all urban universities strive for, a deep and purposeful intersection between campus and community, with each learning from and with the other. I’m thankful the CICF Library Fund recognizes and lifts up the multi-dimensional benefits of library-driven projects like this one.”
This effort has involved many stakeholders and is indebted to the groundwork laid by several ongoing initiatives. First, the Indiana Memory project, administered by the Indiana State Library, hosts and aggregates digital collections from across the state of Indiana. Second, the Digital Public Library of America, for which Indiana Memory is a service hub, has developed technology that Indiana Memory has utilized since 2020 to allow participating eligible institutions to provide their digital collections images to Wikipedia. University Library, as one of Indiana Memory’s most prominent contributors, with a network of community digitization partners, has for the last year carried out an initial CICF grant project that conducted initial outreach to partners and also led to the formation of a Wikimedia Foundation local affiliate, Wikimedians of Indiana.
Current members of the Partnership, value these collaborations and see a lot of promise for the future. Justin Clark, Digital Initiatives Director of the Indiana State Library, applauds this program, saying, “Integrating Indiana Memory with the Central Indiana Wikipedia Partnership has helped new and wider audiences to see our rich, diverse digital collections. We look forward to growing this partnership and expanding what we provide to researchers.”
Since this work began in 2020, the Partnership’s efforts have resulted in 262,924 public domain digital collections images from 16 Indiana institutions being uploaded to Wikimedia Commons (Wikipedia’s sister project for openly licensed media). This contribution constitutes over 250 gigabytes of digitized Indiana heritage. And the group is already seeing impressive dividends from this work, as just this month, it recorded our 10 millionth page view of the images shared on Wikimedia projects, making it one of the most visible platforms for public access to Indiana’s digitized cultural heritage. The Partnership held several public events in the first year with partners, including IUPUI, Newfields, the National Agricultural Library, and IU Bloomington.
"The Central Indiana Wikimedia Partnership is an excellent example of how libraries and museums can share important stories about their communities," said John Bracken, Executive Director of the Digital Public Library of America. "We are thrilled to partner with them on this effort to increase their impact and reach." The work University Library is doing with Wikipedia is improving access to Indiana's cultural heritage, increasing staff and the community’s digital literacy, and adding to the sum of public knowledge about Indiana topics.
For more information, please contact Jere Odell, Scholarly Communication Librarian