I was just wondering if anyone else was using Wikipedia to bring users to online resources. At UNT, I started "wikitizing" our digital collections in September of 2005 by creating links back to digital materials in relevant articles. We have hundreds of articles linking back to the Portal to Texas History (http://texashistory.unt.edu/) and the UNT Libraries Digital Collections (http://digital.library.unt.edu/), which includes Government Documents.

As an example, in the Wikipedia article about Sandra Day O'Connor, in the external links we added a link for "Read Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports regarding Justice O'Connor." Clicking on the link directs users to four CRS Reports: "Affirmative Action: Justice O'Connor's Opinions", "The Retirement of Justice O'Connor: Quorum Requirements, Rehearings and Vote Counts in the Supreme Court", "The Law of Church and State: Selected Opinions of Justice O'Connor", and "Property Rights "Takings": Justice O'Connor's Opinions."

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.

Tags: Wikipedia, digital collections, digital libraries, government documents

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This is an amazing use of the new technologies, and it's giving all of us lots of ideas, thanks for sharing your success. How are you searching through Wikipedia, just searching "Texas" and see what turns up or do you have a strategy in place?
Hi, Nancy. I usually target links that I add to articles either by a geographic area, or into an article about someone or something that is known well enough to merit it's own wikipedia article. For instance, we have large photograph collections of several towns in Texas, so I add a link to those photos in the article about that town and the county it resides in. Here's some examples, so it makes more sense:

Deaf Smith County, Texas
I added a link to photographs, and to two online history books about that county.

Antonio López de Santa Anna
there is an external link back to letters written to Santa Anna, as well as some books that discuss him.

Allan Shivers
links to photographs we have of him.
Thanks very much for the examples. This is great.
Wow...what an amazing idea! *applauds* I'll have to try this in regards to Wikipedia entries on Louisiana government/politics, etc. Thanks!
Cool, Daniel. I wikitized one of your state docs here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_herring#External_links

You'll have some fun with these!

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