use of Catalan has been forbidden several times throughout history—most recently in Spain during the Franco dictatorship (Vallverdú, 1984). Catalan is a threatened language that needs active promotions in order to keep its usage alive and foster generational transmission.
In this linguistic context, Viquipèdia (Catalan Wikipedia, 2020), the Catalan-language edition of Wikipedia, was the second Wikipedia edition in a language other than English (Hinojo, 2016). It was the third to be created, in March 2001—just after the German edition. By 2020, it was ranked as the twentieth language by number of articles and had an active community of about 1,500 monthly editors. Since it was launched, both Wikipedia and the rest of Wikimedia projects have been proven as a major tool to foster Catalan normalization on the Internet and for a proper digital arrangement of ascertainable knowledge in this language (Dengra i Grau, 2018; Rius, 2019).
Amical Wikimedia is the nonprofit organization that promotes freely accessible Catalan culture and knowledge through the values and engagement of individuals and organizations in Viquipèdia (Amical Wikimedia, 2020; Amical Wikimedia, Qui som, 2020). It has conducted several projects to achieve Wikipedia’s mission, including the #Bibliowikis project. Since 2012 Amical Wikimedia has been involved with nearly 500 public, academic, and special libraries located within the Catalan-speaking areas (Proffitt, 2018).
This chapter aims to further explain the origin, ethical conception, linguistic and territorial context, strengths, and weaknesses of the #Bibliowikis case study that has been an initiative to bring librarians into Catalan Wikipedia editing and online free knowledge participation in this language. In addition, this chapter provides applicable examples, some strategies that allow it to bond with academia, and discusses future possibilities, threats, and fate in a quickly changing digital and socioeconomic world.
The Start of #Bibliowikis in Catalonia’s Public Libraries
In 2011, the relationship between Catalan Wikipedia and the librarianship ecosystem (also applicable to the educational sphere) was fraught with distrust. Professional librarians, who had been trained to thoroughly search
