Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library/Extension

The Wikipedia Library

open research hub

The Wikipedia Library connects editors with libraries, open access resources, paywalled databases, digital reference tools, and research experts

The Wikipedia Library is poised to continue growing and achieving its goals. We are excitedly requesting a 6-month extension for phase 2 of the project.

In the past 6 months we laid the foundation for The Wikipedia Library's future growth and expansion. We built a team of volunteers and a hub for connecting the Wikipedia community to the library and its research access opportunities, and have laid the groundwork for partnerships with many key research databases and university libraries. We also produced a code specification for a reference tool script we are developing which will place links to full-text sources next to references in Wikipedia articles. There is so much more we can do. A six-month extension is necessary to fully realize the potential of this project.

PHASE 2 (Jan - July 2014)

New aims

Phase 2 involves expansion of existing successful programs, integration of volunteers, creation of usable deployed reference tech tools, deeper outreach, and new experiments.

Priority	Goal	Needs
Move from existing pilots to robust programs: Donations, Visiting scholars	Growth and sustainability	Personnel: Jake, Pat, Merrilee, Account coordinators, Metrics coordinator
More donation partners and more accounts: Expand the number of partners we approach and pitches we make	Growth	Jake and Pat
Technical infrastructure : Eswitch alpha implementation and promotion, OAuth spec for account management	Ditial tools	Nischay, OAuth expert
Regularize metrics - regular database link dumps for partners, consolidate into pamphlets and wikipages designed for promotion	Impact assessment	Jake and Patu, maybe funds for regular reporting from a current volunteer
Community organizing: develop portal further, investigate ways to surface recent activity, highlight calls to action	Internal outreach, broadening contributors	Pat
Defined and filled roles for volunteer coordinators	Participation and sustainability	Jake and Pat, coordinators
Promote TWL broadly outside of Wikipedia	External outreach	Jake and Pat, travel, talks, articles, blogs, social media, and conferences
Build strategy to go global: pilot with at least 1 other language of Wikiedia: DE/ES partnership, Cochrane Library Spanish, Non-US Visiting scholar, seek diversity of sources (news, science, humanities, access to sources that address systemic bias)	Diversity	Jake and Pat, partner language, chapter, university
New pilots: open access signaling and oa button integration, wikiloves libraries, research desk...	Experimentation and growth	Jake, legal review, volunteers (Daniel Mietchen/Aubrey McFato on open access, volunteer outreach coordinator for WLL)

Budget

The phase 2 budget includes more funding for essential project management, tech development, impact analysis, and networking with library experts.

Item	Amount	Person	Deliverable
Metrics coordinator	$500	Johnuniq, or other volunteer	Full link usage reports for donated references, run on all partnershis quarterly
Travel, talks, conferences: ALA annual meeting in June (Las Vegas), OCLC office in San Francisco)	$1000 (flight + hostel if needed)	Jake	Present Wikipedia Library talks and programs; meetings with key business and technical partners.
Technical development: Eswitch alpha version	$1200	Nischay	A working alpha version of the full text access script, deployed at at least one university.
Technical development reserve: OAuth, Eswitch beta optimization	$500	Niscay, other OAuth expert	We will flexibly use these funds for the most impact, whether that is improving the usability and effectiveness of Eswitch, or investigating security and access integration to third-party websites using OAuth.
Co project coordinator	$6,000 ($25/hr, 10hr/wk)	Patrick Earley (The Interior), lead TWL Librarian	Independent management of new partnerships, community outreach, newsletter, and volunteer positions.
Lead project coordinator	$12,000 (~ $25/hr, 20-30hr/wk)	Jake Orlowitz (Ocaasi), lead TWL coordinator	Creation and oversight of new partnerships, management of ongoing contractors and relationships, initiate new pilots, external outreach, recruit and oversee new volunteers, analyze impact across projects.

Total Phase 2 budget: $21,200

Rationale for scope and budget increase

Phase 1 of The Wikipedia Library had a budget of $7,500, making the phase 2 proposed budget 300% of the initial round. Here's why that increase is appropriate:

Phase 1	Phase 2
The original scope of the pilot (phase 1) was only to get more partnerships.	In building towards phase 2 we established 4 additional compelling goals and multiple ways to advance them with. The central focus of phase 1 became developing The Wikipedia Library as the true community library of Wikipedia. Phase 2 expands upon this, and explores ways in which TWL could become 'the internet's library'.
Phase 1 was a project of one person. Jake handled the full management, implementation, outreach, development, and analysis.	In the course of phase 1 we developed a team of 2 managers, 5 outreach coordinators, 3 account coordinators, 2 technical developers, 1 coder, 27 members, and 250 newsletter recipients. We reached out to 1,500 + TWL subscribers with both news and surveys. Phase 2 expands upon and leverages that growth in participation.
Phase 1 of the project was a startup focused on establishing presence, awareness, and pilot programs	Phase 2 is geared towards sustainable growth, empowering the recruited volunteers to independently manage and expand existing programs.
Phase 1 focused on internal outreach, promoting TWL to the Wikipedia community and recruiting volunteers from within.	Phase 2 is equally about external outreach, promoting TWL to the broader library community and recruiting volunteers from outside our community.
Phase 1 was about building relationships (OCLC, university libraries).	Phase 2 is about advancing real programs by leveraging those relationships (Eswitch script, Visiting Scholar program).
Phase 1 relied on irregular volunteer metrics to demonstrate impact.	Phase 2 creates regular reports run each 3 months across all donations.
Phase 1 was about exploring tech. We were waiting on tech to be developed--OCLC's Eswitch API was unpublished, and OAuth was not yet released. We funded Nischay to code a spec for the Eswitch script.	Phase 2 is about building tech. We are taking the next step with these tools, building our Eswitch script and speccing out OAuth integration based on the recent release.
Phase 1 funded Jake as an untested community organizer and library outreach facilitator.	Phase 2 funds Jake (Ocaasi) as someone who has demonstrated organizational skill, built relationships to leaders in the library community, started new projects, and conducted successful program expansions.
Phase 1 funded Pat only in the second half of the project (3 months at 6 hr/week).	Phase 2 involves Pat in the entire 6 months and expands his role to 10 hr/wk.
Phase 1 funded Jake with $5,000 for 10-15 hr/wk. This was a minimally liveable but not sustainable amount for project management.	Phase 2 funds Jake for ~25 hr/wk at a standard rate comparable to that of WMF community liaisons. It's worth noting that the grant budget, like other contract positions, does not account for taxes or lack of benefits (health insurance, etc.). The increase in budget permits a more full-time focus on and investment in project advancement.
The initial pilot was frankly cheap, appropriate for trying something new. We wanted to test the need for funded programs and we demonstrated a need.	We laid the groundwork for significant expansion across multiple areas in Phase 1. In phase 2 we need to work within a budget which can support the expansion of successful programs.

Remaining in the IEG program

We are still at a stage where the library is nimble and the workload is manageably distributed between paid coordinators and volunteers.

• There's not enough work to grow to an organization yet. We are funding the equivalent of one 40 hr/wk employee, but instead of giving all of the responsibility to a single person, we are giving multiple individuals domains of management. This builds sustainability with moderate growth expectations.
• We are fortunate enough to be nimble, to have no big bureaucracy for overseeing volunteers, and to be able to rely on simple, good community organizing through the established participation history of the coordinators and volunteers. We do not yet see the need for organizational funding or reporting as we have continued to successfully grow and expand within the Individual model.
• Jake (Ocaasi) is still comfortably overseeing project operations while recruiting more and more experts to handle program implementation. Pat is fully invested as a coordinator, but is not in a position to devote more than part-time hours to the projects.
• We'd also like to add that IEG guidance from Siko has been both encouraging and reinforcing. We are still learning a lot with her and want to keep doing so.
• Finally, the total funding amount for phase 2 is still 30% under the maximum IEG grant cap. While not a strong delimiter, that budget number is a further good estimate for when a project has achieved the size and scope that would necessitate an organizational grant rather than an individual one.