minimal hassle and maximal impact. For example, staff at the Music Library Archives were rapidly equipped (over the course of two meetings) to complete an initial set of contributions by adding collections information to Wikipedia biographies. Where possible, the OTS has delivered training and workshops, which demonstrate step-by-step work flows and situate those activities in the context of the Web and its discovery mechanisms. As of October 2020, more than fifty staff across all three U of T campuses had benefited from these workshops. Moreover, these trainings have themselves been opportunities for collaboration with other staff and interns, contributing to experiential learning at UTL in ways that integrate the Web into library production. Through these collaborations, the loose network of interested staff at UTL has rapidly come to cocreate clear descriptions and starting points for linked open knowledge projects.
The OTS has built bridges across campuses and departments to identify and connect interested staff for open technology engagement. The result is a loose network of staff who now share and receive updates through an open technologies email listserv and participate in various working groups, some of which span multiple library units. In general, the OTS capacity to bring together and logistically support interest groups has been key to developing momentum on multiunit collaborations, which might otherwise become deprioritized over time.
The impact of the move from WIR’s relatively self-contained approach to the OTS’s intentionally inclusive approach at UTL is fourfold. Most immediately, each resource thoughtfully contributed to Wikipedia becomes more useful to the web user, and in the appropriate context. The OTS actively works to increase the number of such contributors. Second, these contributions gain further significance where they also help balance inequities in knowledge representation. By pursuing work across the library system that enables fair and dignified knowledge production and discovery for all, the OTS builds another layer of consistency in the university’s move toward equity. For example, the very first collaborative event (February 2020) with staff from University of Toronto Scarborough Library and Toronto Public Library contributed accessible coverage of Toronto’s vastly underrepresented
