In the past, the blog has highlighted the work of Dr. Kathleen McCook and her students in creating high quality, open access essays about library history on wikipedia, including Dr. McCook’s article for the Progressive Librarian, “Librarians as Wikipedians: From Library History to Librarianship and Human Rights”.
On this note, wikipedia has a category for historians of libraries:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Historians_of_libraries
However, there are many notable scholars of library history missing from the category because no wikipedia entry exists about them.
We are writing to encourage others to consider writing about a library historian on wikipedia. By publishing on wikipedia, we can provide the global community with open access information about the pioneers of library historiography and help fulfill the Round Table’s mission to “promote awareness and discussion of historical issues in librarianship.”
Volunteers are also needed to write essays about other library topics, including LHRT and its history. For an example, please see this recent page updated by Dr. McCook: Justin Winsor Prize (library) It draws on a number of sources. In addition to text, it provides high value special features such as a list of where all the essays were published. The essay also links to other relevant categories and essays within wikipedia.
How To Help:
To coordinate our efforts and avoid duplication, we are encouraging anyone interested in volunteering to write a wikipedia essay to:
- Check wikipedia to ensure that an entry does not already exist on that library historian or topic.
- Email the blog at lhrtnewsandnotes@gmail.com with the historian you wish to write about, and we will add the historian and your name to a working list (we can double-check the list to ensure no one has already signed up to write on that historian).