regards to Wikipedia and its sibling projects. During the early stages of this project, there were only a few publications that had attempted to do this (Ayers et al., 2008; Proffitt, 2018). This fact became the impetus for Laurie’s interest in developing an OA publication that drew not just from the work of library workers in North America but also attempted to make it available at a more affordable price.
With this goal in mind, we began planning for this publication. From the beginning, we had a sense that identifying contributors might not be a difficult process given the increasing visibility of Wikimedia-related projects that librarians were writing, presenting, and talking about. We anticipated that issues might arise as we attempted to identify authors from outside of North America, and similarly as we tried to seek funding for this project. As it turned out, the challenges came from elsewhere, and in this case, it was an issue that affected us all. Needless to say, the COVID-19 pandemic was not something that we could have planned for, but we still managed to finish this project due to the privileged positions that we editors hold. Yet, this project is much different than we expected, and how could it not be? The pandemic has affected all spheres of life and diluted any boundaries between our homes and workplaces. Because of these circumstances, we wanted to dedicate some space to talk about this project, its successes and failures, the risks and challenges that we faced, and the forces that kept it going and almost stopped it. Last, we wanted to dedicate space to highlight and uphold the work of our contributors, both those who made it to the final publication and those who did not. Their efforts have not gone unseen and their work should not be left unheard.
Planning and Preparation
Funding and Selecting a Publisher
While seeking a more “traditional” publisher like ACRL or Library Juice Press, who are two well-respected, library-centric publishers, would have been an option, our timeline and how much time we could dedicate to the project were unfortunately limited. So, we chose the
