collections. Selected items from the Wenceslaus Hollar, Agnes Chamberlin, and Anatomia collections were linked to the English and German Wikipedia through citations, external links, and images. Usage statistics showed that Wikipedia edits had significantly increased and sustained traffic to these collections, suggesting that Wikipedia edits had been more effective at improving collections access than the use of traditional library news items and social media. In particular, images uploaded from the Anatomia collection demonstrated the value of adding collections material as visual aids to highly visible Wikipedia articles.
Based on the successful summer pilot, the UTL chief librarian funded a year-long WIR pilot for the 2018–2019 academic year. The pilot was launched with the explicit goal of facilitating Wikipedia-based access to UTL’s special collections but also to support editing events and create toolkits that others could repurpose for their own events. Due to UTL’s labor environment, the WIR position was posted as a part-time graduate student library assistant (GSLA) position. All University of Toronto graduate students were eligible to apply to the posting, and of the thirty-five applicants, only two had prior Wikipedia editing experience.
During the year-long pilot, the WIR activities fell into three broad categories—creating a work plan and infrastructure around their activities, carrying out the activities, and then developing documentation for a successor to carry on the work of the pilot. The WIR initially developed their plan of work through an environmental scan of more than fifty institutional WIR positions, examining their best practices and activities. The environmental scan also reviewed the summer pilot and lessons learned, including approaches to editing, project documentation, collections of focus (e.g., Chamberlin, Hollar), discussion on sources and copyright (especially in relation to images), and resources for learning. Next, the WIR identified strengths of the UTL digital collections and collection themes, looking for collections that would be appropriate for citation in Wikipedia. Factors considered in selecting a digital collection to work with included status (is the collection still maintained?), location (where is the collection hosted?), ease of use, copyright, content sensitivity, notability, and overall “Wikipedia friendliness” of content. Some digital collections were judged more Wikipedia-friendly than others in the kinds of material they contained
