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UNT Creates 400K Library Users with Wikipedia

In a new discussion over at the Library 2.0 Government Documents group, librarian Dreanna Belden comments on how the University of North Texas libraries have ramped up usage of their locally housed digital document and photograph collections by adding relevant links to Wikipedia. For example, they added a link to Congressional Research Reports about Justice Sandra Day O’Connor to her Wikipedia entry.

What has been the result of adding article-appropriate library links to over 600 Wikipedia articles? Dreanna says (emphasis mine):

Since adding links back to our collections into over 600 Wikipedia articles, we have experience dramatically increased usage of our online collections. In the past year over 400,000 unique users have clicked through Wikipedia into our digital collections.

Way to go UNT! If there other libraries doing this sort of thing, let Dreanna know what kind of response you’re getting. Or leave a comment here and we’ll send it her way.

If you’re not up for adding your collection links to Wikipedia, or if you don’t have a local digital collection to link to, consider blogging your reference questions and watch what you found on average tarrif levels rise to the top of Google.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.


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