Page:Wikipedia and Academic Libraries.djvu/179

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Dengra, Fenoll, Allué, Fort, García, and Pons

Foundation as an opportunity to further engage GLAM and heritage initiatives (Hinojo, 2013), by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) for public libraries (Fenoll, 2016), and was presented at the United Nations Educational, Scienti c, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) (Parreño Mont, 2017). Additionally, #Bibliowikis’ impact and recognition was a crucial push for the final recognition from the Wikimedia Foundation of Amical Wikimedia as the first, worldwide official affiliate that was not framed in the boundaries of a state but rather in the defense of a language (Ara, 2013). One year after, Amical received the National Prize of Culture 2014 by the Catalan Government (Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana, 2015).

The proper visualization of a volunteer workforce joined with public entities, such as libraries, allowed #Bibliowikis to scale up. Even in the case of less institutional support and volunteering impact, good results, such as QR codes for two-dimensional items uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, were shared by the Valencian #Bibliowikis in national conferences hosted by the Spanish Federation of Societies of Archivist, Librarians, Documentalist, and Museology (FESABID) (Pons et al., 2019)—proving the social and academic influence of different asymmetric, but valid scalings. In all cases, Wikipedia edits and multimedia uploads contributed to facilitate the understanding and development of Open Access public policies and, therefore, allowed them to be the seed of change.

However, the Amical-way has some weaknesses and uncertainties in relation to libraries. Unlike other Amical Wikimedia initiatives, #Bibliowikis has no financial cost, except for the travel or basic expenses of its volunteers (Meta-Wiki, 2014). Thus, its weaknesses do not depend on the monetary basis but on the volunteering commitment and discursive self-development, as well as on librarians and their regulatory bodies to maintain a self-sustained scaffolded training and engagement. A loss of the top-down institutional support and outreach, which happened in Catalonia in 2017 with the sudden change of the Head of Public Libraries (Martínez, 2017), can result in a mid- or a long-term impact decrease of the project. In fact, a loss of volunteering activity has consequently decreased follow-up meetings, libraries