Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Efficiency

I think this page could be one of the most important project pages in Wikipedia, but at the moment it is a little hard to keep up with. Would it be a good idea to use {{resolved}} templates and possibly {{hard-one}} or to put something like "(resolved)" in the topic to ease navigation?--Commander Keane (talk) 07:25, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Ok, now I have read the instructions :P. It seems we are meant to put filled in requests to a special page. I guess I will try to do that, and maybe ask people on their talk pages if their question is resolved so it can be moved to the filled requests page.--Commander Keane (talk)

The {{resolved}} template has been used in the past, and periodically someone would move the requests marked resolved to the Filled requests subpage. As you point out there have been a number of requests which have been quickly fulfilled recently. I have moved them to the Filled requests page so they are no longer cluttering up the page. There are some other requests which have been filled but the requester hasn't specifically acknowledged that they've got it; those I have left. Dr pda (talk) 11:23, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

How well does this page work? Just curious, becuase it isn't very well advertised. We might be able to improve it. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 05:23, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Have a look at the Filled requests subpage to get an idea of how many requests are filled per month, and how long it takes. If the request is for something like an article from a major journal/newspaper to which a university library is likely to have an electronic subscription, the response is likely to be pretty prompt. (My university doesn't have access to the journal you've requested, sorry). There are two or three of us who regularly fill requests at the moment. I have it in the back of my mind to write an article for the Signpost to publicise the page, but haven't got round to it. Dr pda (talk) 01:15, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Cool. Thanks. More people watching might just not add requests but answers, so it's something to try. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 03:42, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Is there any (meta)search engine, for biomedical journal articles, resembling "OneLook.com" (a simultaneous multiple dictionary search)?

Q: Do such a service exist yet?

I know! This is really a ref.desk question, but you who would know about this, or would like to get to know about it, will probably be here at WP:RX, so..

When I look up a word, or phrase, at the (nonsubscription) dictionary: OneLook.com, then, along with a quick definition, I get a list of all the online dictionaries that do have an entry (a lexeme) for that word.
For each dictionary, the list concisely provides both a direct link to the entry (lexeme) in question AND a link to the dictionary's home page AND a link to general information about that dictionary.

It would be very useful to have a similar service for full text PDF files of articles from scientific journals, or even just from biomedical journals alone.
There are surely a lot of people who have thought of this before I did, but the question is: Do such a service exist yet?

To be useful, this metasearch engine should:

• Be able to find and provide direct links to the PDFs even when those files are inaccessible to, or when the links will appear to be broken to non-subscribers.
• List links to:
  1. The eventual full text PDF file from the journal's own web page. (Direct link)
  2. The eventual home page of the journal
  3. A short description of the journal
  4. That journal's eventual advanced article search page

• Then, for each bibliographical data base provider that actually carries a full text (PDF) of the article in question, it should list:
  1. A direct link to the full text PDF file from that data base provider
  2. Name of and link to home page of that bibliographical data base.
  3. Link to a short description of that bibliographical data base
  4. Link to the advanced search page from that data base provider

Such a metasearc egine would be useful while:

1. The number of full text PDF articles varies between different service providers. (There will be a long time before your main service provider, for instance JSTOR, will have everything at one place)
2. For many people the service/journal subscription status, for their current location, will probably vary over time -- and even their location will often vary through the day or through the week.

Of course, running this kind of service would require considerably more resources than running the onlook.com dictionary service, but the typical potential users of such a service would be quite an attractive lot to advertisers would they not? (That was meant as a rhetorical question only, as this forum (WP:RX) is no place for having lengthydiscussions!).

Well, Do you know whether any such service exists yet?
--Seren-dipper (talk) 22:37, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps not as a single service, though Pubmed, Web of Science and Google Scholar are all along those lines. It's always a tradeoff between answering all questions vs. best answering questions within a given domain. A specialized biomedical tool will be better at targetted replies to biomedical questions, but may miss some things on the periphery that the generalist tool would catch (e.g. biography or obit for biomed writers. The Copernicus approach to metasearch on the internet never really took off, though Bing seems to use some of their ideas. LeadSongDog come howl! 17:25, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Archiving the found scans

When scans result from these requests, should we not try to send them to archives such as WebCite so they are accessible to reviewers, editors, and readers? LeadSongDog come howl! 05:33, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Resolved rate

Is anyone keeping a record of the percentage of requests to this page which get resolved? This would be an interesting statistic. --Viennese Waltz 09:40, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

I did a quick count of requests made in May and it looks like 27 were filled and 8 were not. (One additional request was mostly filled.)

My experience is that if the resource is available through online subscription at major university libraries than its very likely to get fulfilled and if its the type of thing that major university libraries have as a hard copy than its somewhat likely to be fulfilled. General interest publications that universities don't tend to have aren't particularly likely to be fulfilled. As far as US newspapers, I think that university libraries typically have online access to the archives of local papers, major national publications like the NY Times and databases like LexisNexis that cover roughly the last 20 years. If you were looking for an article in a small city newspaper from 50 years ago or a publication that's not likely to be in a university library than you're best bet might be to try to find a wikipedian in that city who could check to see if their local public library had access or make an interlibrary loan request at your local library. GabrielF (talk) 22:50, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

I am not a stats man but I can tell everyone this much: GabrielF has been outstanding in resolving the numerous and various queries which I have raised here. I have been promoting the project via various talk pages as and when awkward situations have arisen. It seems to end up with me being the one to actually ask the question, but hopefully the concept is sticking in someone's brain, somewhere. I am still waiting for that first request for an article from the journal of the Newcomen Society, regarding which I can probably supply the resource and would be happy to do so. - Sitush (talk) 01:05, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. I'm starting to think that Harvard place must have something to be said for it. ;-) LeadSongDog come howl! 05:36, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

make references easier to use

hello i was wondering if the reference part when anyone is editing be changed so that it could appear neat all the time. instead of just putting only the url, the user can put the date the article was created, the name,etc.--Nrpf22pr (talk) 04:44, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Hi, unfortunately this is probably the wrong place to ask this question. You might have better luck posting at Wikipedia:Help desk. However, there are templates that can be used to add the type of information that you are describing. Examples of these templates are located at Template:Cite book, Template:Cite journal, Template:Cite news, and Template:Cite web. There are a couple of ways to add these templates to a page. You can copy and paste the code for the template into the page you want to edit and then fill in the information. There is also a toolbar that will help you format citations easily. Once you've logged in, click on My Preferences at the top of the screen next to your talk page. Click on the Editing tab. Make sure that Show edit toolbar and Enable enhanced editing toolbar are checked. Click save. When you edit a page there should be a "Cite" option in the toolbar above the text box where you enter the page's information. I hope that helps. GabrielF (talk) 18:18, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Note, I've moved this thread here to avoid clutter on the project page. GabrielF (talk) 00:16, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Searching filled requests

Maybe I'm missing something here, but - would it not be a good idea to make the archive of filled requests searchable? If possible, of course. Nortonius (talk) 16:30, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

I've added a search box to the page. [1] Goodvac (talk) 00:20, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

That's great, and thanks for the rapid response! Nortonius (talk) 09:49, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Free access to Highbeam Research for Wikipedians

Users of the Resource Exchange may be interested to know that Highbeam Research, which provides access to 6,500 publications, is offering free access to Wikipedians. For more on the announcement, see: User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 99#Cool news, HighBeam Research to donate free, 1-year accounts for Wikipedians GabrielF (talk) 15:09, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Wow, that looks interesting, I see they also have Biology articles. I would be interested in getting access to those..! Ruigeroeland (talk) 15:33, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Looks like you can now request an account at Wikipedia:Highbeam/Applications. GabrielF (talk) 14:38, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Please archive

Can the requests page archival be automated please. It is growing rather long. Shyamal (talk) 03:05, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

This was tried before, see #Archive and User talk:ClueBot Commons/Archives/2010/August#Bugs with archiving. --тнояsтеn ⇔ 11:17, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

But do we really want to keep unfilled requests from 2009 on hold for so long? Shyamal (talk) 17:17, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Why not delete stale, unfulfilled and fulfilled requests

Why not delete stale, unfulfilled and fulfilled requests? They have no historic value and archiving is really difficult splitting out the different thread types. Alternatively, the standard archiving method - preferable bot activated - of all threads to an archive sub-page could be done. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 05:06, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Good thinking. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 05:23, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

See also one section above. --тнояsтеn ⇔ 06:58, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

We do need a better structure to address this work. I'd suggest that a transcluded subpage arrangement, as used on wp:SPI and wp:AFD, would help. But there is historic value, even to failed requests: they show an effort was made to find a source. It justifies removing article content for having failed verification. LeadSongDog come howl! 13:50, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Book sources

Is there something, like the RX, for requesting book sources, perhaps scans or another editor to use the work to expand an article? I'm considering bringing Hermaphrodite (Nadar) (caution, NSFW) to FA class, and there is a book from Creaphis which looks to be useful. However, ordering it where I live would set me back close to 60 dollars (which is, quite frankly, not something I'll spend) and libraries here would most certainly not hold it. It's held in several libraries, like Stanford, but that's way out of my reach. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 04:26, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

I can scan it in early September. It looks like its only 64 pages. Are you interested in the images or the images and the text or what? GabrielF (talk) 05:33, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

• Images and text, if possible. More text than images, if size is a problem, but we're missing three of the series in our article. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 06:44, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Question on new page tab

Hello,

to avoid edit conflicts, is it possible to change the "New Section" tab on the top, so that the section headers will be 4-level instead of 2-level? Regards.--Kürbis (✔) 10:51, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

 Done I added a button to the page for people to make new requests that will avoid edit conflicts. --Odie5533 (talk) 16:29, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Asking journal for back issues of articles

I don't think there's a specific place on Wikipedia to ask this, and this talk page matches with my question the best, so I will ask here. I want to gain access to a journal article from the back issues of the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society. The article was written in the 1960s or 70s (I have to check) and is not available on the website. Any guidance on how to contact an individual in a position of responsibility in the British Interplanetary Society in order to get this article would be welcome. Wer900 • talk 19:49, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Visability of this page

I think this resource is great but I couldn't find it and after quite an lot of searching gave up and asked at WP:HELPDESK. Perhaps you could consider making more redirects here such as Wikipedia:Check sources, Wikipedia:Check references, Wikipedia:Verify sources or setup a Wikipedia:Noticeboard or add to {{Noticeboard links}}. Regards, Sun Creator^(talk) 14:52, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Good Idea.--Shrike (talk)/WP:RX 10:07, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Not so sure it is such a good idea to advertise that widely. This is meant to be a service to Wikipedia editors building the encyclopedia. If it becomes a service to every passing reader with a query it will overload the volunteers and may possibly start running into copyright problems. There is already a huge increase in activity on this page in the last year or two. SpinningSpark 11:02, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

I usually don't fulfill request of random IP.People who ask for sources are usually established editors.--Shrike (talk)/WP:RX 12:39, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

With this and the next discussion in light, I think that there needs to be a guideline or policy detailing how individuals giving paid source material to other editors should behave. Wer900 • talk 20:09, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Grant proposal for The Wikipedia Library

Hi folks. A grant proposal I submitted for an individual engagement grant are up for review:

• The Wikipedia Library - An expansion of the Wikipedia Library program, to attract new donors, improve outreach to research databases, and prepare for improved technical integration and management of donated accounts

I'd appreciate any feedback, comments, questions. Cheers, Ocaasi ^{t | c} 20:36, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

#icanhazpdf

It has come to my knowledge that the hashtag #icanhaspdf on Twitter is a way for people who tweet to get journal articles that they have no access to. I am thinking about including this fact onto the Resource Request page as an alternative, or for people who do not use Wikipedia. I hereby ask for your opinion. Kinkreet^{~♥moshi moshi♥~} 23:32, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't think that this is a good idea. By keeping resource requests on site, we can fall back on the claim that it's all for the good of the encyclopedia and probably under fair use (in the United States). Once we start going off site, we lose that protection, I think. Sven Manguard Wha? 03:40, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Free English newspaper sources

I made the above page live today and I figured I'd drop a line since I assume many who might see it here are intimately involved with and care about providing resources. If anyone knows of any to add to the list that would be great. Otherwise, it might be good to know about, possibly for use, and possibly to point someone to who is looking for a place to start a search for reliable English sources. Thanks--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 03:50, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia Library Header Box

Hi! I'm trying to collect our library resources under a common banner. How would you feel about putting this template at the top of the page?

Best, Ocaasi ^{t | c} 18:06, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Looks good to me. GabrielF (talk) 19:13, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Library now offering accounts from Cochrane Collaboration (sign up!)

The Wikipedia Library gets Wikipedia editors free access to reliable sources that are behind paywalls. Because you are signed on as a medical editor, I thought you'd want to know about our most recent donation from Cochrane Collaboration.

• Cochrane Collaboration is an independent medical nonprofit organization that conducts systematic reviews of randomized controlled trials of health-care interventions, which it then publishes in the Cochrane Library.
• Cochrane has generously agreed to give free, full-access accounts to 100 medical editors. Individual access would otherwise cost between $300 and $800 per account.
• If you are still active as a medical editor, come and sign up :)

Cheers, Ocaasi ^{t | c} 20:38, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Archive

Hi! Can anyone look for automatically archiving of the resolved requests, maybe according to {{done}} or {{resolved}}? Doc Taxon (talk) 04:01, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I've now set this up with ClueBot III; requests marked with {{done}} or {{resolved}} will be automatically archived. I've also split the Filled requests subpage into by-year archives to facilitate this, as well as adding a subpage for Stale requests, to which requests which have had no response for some time can be moved manually. I guess the archiving will start happening once the bot notices this page has been set up for archiving. Dr pda (talk) 09:54, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Looks like the bot has problems with the structure: [2]. It moved the solved requests to subpage 1999 and the months are wrong. Maybe it doesn't work properly with those level 4 sub-subsections. --тнояsтеn ⇔ 19:56, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes I saw that; I made a bug report to the owner here. Hopefully they will fix the problems soon. Dr pda (talk) 22:51, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Bug report may be found here now: User talk:ClueBot Commons/Archives/2010/August#Bugs with archiving. --тнояsтеn ⇔ 15:35, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Page maintenance

I'm relatively new to regular participation here, so I have some questions about how things are run. Is there a bot automatically archiving filled requests? If not, perhaps we should set one up. Also, any thoughts on what to do with very old unfilled requests? Surely most of these have been abandoned by the requester. Perhaps we can archive anything older than, say, a year, and re-categorize the rest into groups - books, articles, etc. - to give them a better chance of being filled. I suspect most people just scroll to the bottom of the page to look at the new requests. Gamaliel (talk) 15:20, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

For the former see #Archive. --тнояsтеn ⇔ 15:33, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

On the same topic - can we define stale "had any response for a long period of time" - would six months work as a reasonable cutoff? If so we can state it so that page maintainers and new volunteers can archive accordingly Shyamal (talk) 04:56, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Six months seems rather a long time, assuming there have been no responses whatsoever during that time. I would suggest three months, and I'm not at all sure that one or two months would be too short. John M Baker (talk) 16:45, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Three months sounds good. Will add that to the page introduction. Shyamal (talk) 10:56, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Related: before or after archiving, requests with no successful finds should be reported back to the original requester and the talkpage of the related article. While absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, such cases will often correspond to a citation which should at least be marked with {{fv}}. Is there a suitable tool for such notifications? If not, can we create one? LeadSongDog come howl! 14:59, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

@LeadSongDog: {{ping|USERNAME}} raises a notification that should notify the requester. I added an instruction line about it. Shyamal (talk) 15:48, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that's great for notifying the user if they're still active on en-wp, but we still should have a notice to the relevant article's talkpage. LeadSongDog come howl! 16:21, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

talk on the RX, need your stories

Hi,

I'd like to give a lightning talk about the resource exchange at Wikipedia Day in New York. Do you have fun or interesting examples of new articles or improvements to existing articles that you've been able to make because of the research exchange? If so, please use them here so I can present them.

Best, GabrielF (talk) 20:53, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Maybe this question should be asked to the editors talk pages that regularly ask for articles as probably they don't watch this pages--Shrike (talk)/WP:RX 21:05, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I saw this a bit too late - but posting this here just in case someone needs it in future - I was looking for a reference by Julian Huxley widely cited as Zoologische Jahrbücher 80:9–29. - User:Smartse followed up this reference and got it for me and found that there was a problem in the citation. It was 88:9-30 and the journal needed to be specified more fully as in the Asian Openbill - makes one wonder if researchers actually check the papers they cite... Shyamal (talk) 16:25, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

What is the best time to ask for sources?

I have not used this page much but I have observed that sometimes requests are granted within minutes and other times they go unanswered. If the time that the request is made is a factor in this, what is the best time? Lesion (talk) 13:15, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

I guess the time taken is mostly down to the source the information is requested from; some sources are accessible by many more people than others. If I had to pick a best time then during the day (weekend?) UTC would probably be best! Samwalton9 (talk) 14:18, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Also, you can try posting directly to the top contributors to the page.[3] -- Jreferee (talk) 06:11, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Article retrieval services

Has anyone used Artrieve or any similar service, where you pay a fee and they fetch a PDF scan of a document from a library? And/or does anyone know a way to consistently and timely get documents from cross-country libraries when you are not a student. (library doesn't let non-students do inter-library loans). CorporateM (Talk) 22:53, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Library seeks renewal (please comment)

The Wikipedia Library has grown from a collection of donations to paywalled sources into a broad open research portal for our community. New partnerships have been formed, new pilot programs started, new connections made with our library experts and likeminded institutions. We have tried to bring people together in a new sense of purpose and community about the importance of facilitating research in an open and collaborative way. Here's what we've done so far:

• Increased access to sources: 1500 editors signed up for 3700 free accounts, individually worth over $500,000, with usage increases of those references between 400-600%
• Deep networking: Built relationships with Credo, HighBeam, Questia, JSTOR, Cochrane, LexisNexis, EBSCO, New York Times, and OCLC
• New pilot projects: Started the Wikipedia Visiting Scholar project to empower university-affiliated Wikipedia researchers
• Developed community: Created portal connecting 250 newsletter recipients, 30 library members, 3 volunteer coordinators, and 2 part-time contractors
• Tech scoped: Spec'd out a reference tool for linking to full-text sources and established a basis for OAuth integration
• Broad outreach: Wrote a feature article for Library Journal's The Digital Shift; presenting at the American Library Association annual meeting

We've proposed a 6 month renewal request to continue and deepen this work and would appreciate your comments, concerns, thoughts, questions, or endorsements.

Cheers, Jake Ocaasi ^{t | c} 12:30, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

World eBook Fair

Has anyone tried using worldebookfair.org yet? Reading their about page, it seems a bit too good to be legit. Am I missing a catch? LeadSongDog come howl! 23:36, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

Suggestion for reorganization of pages

The request page seems to be the most popular and important page within this project and there are all kinds of things duplicated, for instance we have a list of direct contacts at the top of the request page as well as another such list at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Resource_Exchange/Shared_Resources. I feel that this resource request page should be the main page - located at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Resource_Exchange and that people to contact and shared resources should be linked from there. (Marking this for the founder user @Phoebe: as well) Shyamal (talk) 03:10, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

sadly I haven't had the time to participate in this much for a while -- I would welcome efforts to make it more streamlined and useful :) -- phoebe / (talk to me) 19:42, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

I agree. WP:RX is a little buried at the moment. GabrielF (talk) 08:01, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Access to Illustrated London News archive

Does anyone have access to the Illustrated London News archive (Gale)? Shyamal (talk) 12:03, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Download tools

I'm not the most techy of editors, so apologies if I'm posting something that everyone but me has been using for the last ten years. I've found it useful to temporarily download pages from Google books using the Google Book Downloader 2.3 script and similarly with the self-explanatory Amazon Reader (Look Inside) Downloader, which just enables right-click saving Jimfbleak - talk to me? 14:49, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Any way to avoid revealing personal information?

Just now I was planning to fulfil a request for this article, but on downloading the PDF I realised it had included the name of my university (through which I have access to T&F journals) on every page. Since I'm not comfortable sharing that information with the public, or privately with editors I don't know, does anyone know of any way to download articles from T&F without it including that information? (Other publishers/databases seem to include the information only on a front page that can be easily removed, T&F seems to be the only one that stamps it on every single page.) – Arms & Hearts (talk) 11:14, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

I can't help you with PDF downloads, but have you tried downloading the paper as text? Mohamed CJ (talk) 16:25, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia Library Redesign?

Hi all! We recently redesigned The Wikipedia Library and I took a stab at adapting the new design to WP:RX to make it cleaner and simpler to use.

Take a look at let me know what you think! New WP:RX design mockup: User:Ocaasi/RX

Cheers, Jake Ocaasi ^{t | c} 15:29, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

It certainly looks better, but could it be compacted more particularly if the white space at the top can be trimmed. The logo wrapped into the text would save quite a lot of space. Would be nice to get to the real request button without having to scroll. Also from earlier experience it seems like general requests - ie for anything without stating the actual reference - do not seem to get too much response. Asking for reliable sources on a subject should ideally be part of the work of the reference desk does although currently the ref-desk answers questions without really citing reliable (more like Quora at the moment) Shyamal (talk) 05:33, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Also "Find a source you need and share a source you have" - I think this should be something like "Find a source you need or help others with sources" - "share a source" - seems to be what we have at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Resource_Exchange/Shared_Resources - something not readily accessible at the moment. Shyamal (talk) 05:36, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the tips! I've incorporated the suggestions about a more specific page description and tried to tighten the white space a bit. I'm trying it out live to see what others think. Happy to keep working on design, layout, text, etc. Cheers, Ocaasi ^{t | c} 16:54, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

A couple of suggestions. The text size after the banner should ideally remain in the normal style. A table of contents after the banner would be good to retain. Shyamal (talk) 10:39, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Is there a way to fully utilize the width of the page? This page is rather long (length-wise) already. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 18:34, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

But do we really need to? Wikipedia's width-heavy format can make things less legible, eg figures four vs five. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 22:27, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Now, commenting on the design itself, which was just removed ... I'm sorry to say that it's pretty bad, Ocaasi. The text didn't flow around the logo, the postage stamp on the right (oh, that was a picture) was awkwardly placed in line with "Resource Exchange", and the entire top was just cluttered and bloated with information. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 06:54, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Why on Earth has the table of contents gone? I used to scan it occasionally for things I might be able to help with: it never arose, and in any case I no longer can (subscriptions expired), but others might have been doing the same, and in any case without a table of contents the page is a chartless morass. Unless I'm missing something...? Nortonius (talk) 15:34, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

I see the TOC's back now, thanks Shyamal. Nortonius (talk) 22:41, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Regarding requests from Harvard University libraries

In regards to future requests from Harvard University libraries

A Reddit user at this thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/25s7m5/request_for_pages_of_book_at_the_harvard_law/ encourages contacting the staff at Harvard Student Agencies http://www.hsa.net/contact-us/ (probably the "Translation" contact first) to check if a requested book scan is legal, and if so, to do the scan at US $15 per hour. WhisperToMe (talk) 03:07, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Literature Online Access

Hello all! At The Wikipedia Library we are currently in talks with Proquest's Literature Online and Early English Books Online to get Wikipedians access to those databases/collections. They asked us for a bit of information about how Wikipedians might use the research materials, asking us to do a brief survey. It would be extremely helpful if users could fill out the following Google form: Proquest - Literature Online / Wikipedia Library user interest survey. Afterward, while waiting for us to finish talks on Literature Online, we would like to invite editors to apply for already established available partnerships, listed at our partners page. Thank you for all of your help! Sadads (talk) 20:18, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

South Asia Archive

Does anyone have access to South Asia Archive http://www.southasiaarchive.com ? Shyamal (talk) 01:51, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Level 4 headings

Why do we use level 4 headings? Can't we change it to level 2 headings with level one headings for the dates? That way a new request could be added with the new section button. Ryan Vesey 18:21, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

@Ryan Vesey: A tad late but  Done. Thank you. - NQ (talk) 19:14, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Asking for large numbers of archived newspaper articles?

I have a list of about 40 articles, mainly from the LA Times pay archive from the 50s & 60s, that are used on a bio. Should I just list all of them on the project page, or will that sort of spam-like request just get ignored? Thanks, Bromley86 (talk) 14:45, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

@Bromley86: Go ahead. Ask away. - NQ (talk) 22:37, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

This page

Moved from Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request

 – - NQ (talk) 12:06, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Out of total curiosity, exactly how legal or illegal is this?

→Σσς. (Sigma) 03:54, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

There's an existing discussion on the talk page; I suggest you move this section there. Regards, Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 03:56, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia Library looking for Partner Account Coordinators!

Hello resource sharers! At The Wikipedia Library, we are actively looking for more volunteers to help with Partner donation distribution, communications towards the Wikimedia community and outreach with publishers! If you would be interested in helping us get other users access to quality sources, complete an on-wiki application, or let our lead volunteer coordinator, User:Nikkimaria know. Thanks much! Sadads (talk) 02:50, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Copyright piracy?

This board systematically solicits people to upload copyrighted material from closed sources to openly accessible webpages. Can anybody explain to me why people think this might not be systematic copyright piracy? Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:56, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

If it will be done by mail or removed right after the person downloaded the needed resource.Would it be better?--Shrike (talk)/WP:RX 08:00, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Check the terms of service of the online database you use. It probably says you may download articles only for your own personal use. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:02, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

For example JSTOR terms [4] allow it IMO.--Shrike (talk)/WP:RX 08:10, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Wiley too [5]- "Authorized Users may also transmit such material to a third-party colleague in hard copy or electronically for personal use or scholarly, educationanal"--Shrike (talk)/WP:RX 08:13, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

For JSTOR, the sharing clause is only valid "within the premises of an Authorized User's affiliated Institutional Licensee" or "remotely through secure access methods". It specifically excludes "incorporating Content into an unrestricted database or website". Wiley too restricts it to individual colleagues, so in that case you might be in the green if you do it per e-mail to only an individual fellow editor, but uploading on an open website, even just temporarily, is definitely not okay. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:21, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

OK then the page should be updated accordingly .--Shrike (talk)/WP:RX 08:24, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

I think incorporating content in this case refers to direct copyvio into articles. IRWolfie- (talk) 20:21, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure uploading a pdf file to an open-access website, so that it can be download and read from that site, also counts as "incorporating content" into that site. Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:20, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

So if I leave a copy of a Wiley article I printed in a public place while I go for a cup of coffee, I violate the rules? Clearly somebody can snap pictures of all pages with a cellphone camera in that time. How is temporarily hosting on a website any different? The main concern is "systematic distribution" and temporary hosting for tens of minutes does not meet that criteria. Churn and change (talk) 18:07, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Nobody should use links to the journal articles gotten from WP:RX and then copy-paste those links into the references section of the Wikipedia article that the journal reference is used for. One should always link to the official page, with a paywall if it exists, for the references section. And remember, links are generally removed within hours and articles are often sent by email. Journals are not losing any ability to profit from WP:RX that they don't expressly disclaim in their terms and conditions. Wer900 • talk 19:58, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

.Quite the reverse, really. Citation in a wp article generates demand for paid downloads from the journal. It is a clear win-win scenario. LeadSongDog come howl! 05:18, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

I know of at least one scientist who finds that a well sourced WP article can be a convenient place for finding bibliographic links, particularly for the less current or harder to find sources. And it may give more visibility to one's own articles, even if no one pays extra to download them. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:20, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Small town papers archive

Moved from Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request

 – - NQ (talk) 00:16, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Possibly wrong place for this

I remember that was able to access a much better (more comprehensive) source for US small town papers than smalltownpapers.com. I can't remember what exactly it was. I sort of suspect it was via stparchive.com, and that this has been dismantled or sold off or something. But maybe it was something else. It's a shame, because I was trying to recreate some research I did a while ago, and I can't seem to find the sources I used originally. Any advice in re free small town paper archives would be welcome. --Dingsuntil (talk) 22:31, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

• Hi, what newspaper sources are you looking for? Smalltownpapers.com and stparchive.com are the same. - NQ (talk) 22:52, 24 March 2015 (UTC)
• Are you thinking of Newspaperarchive.com? It's probably the most comprehensive, but it isn't free. John M Baker (talk) 22:55, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

The Sunday Times: question about current-day article(s)

Moved from Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request

 – - NQ (talk) 10:46, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Hey, sooner or later I'm going to need the nominations article, and then the winners article, re: the Ian Charleson Awards when each list is announced in TST. Last year I had to do one of those one-pound-one-month trials, but if you don't un-subscribe after a certain number of days they ding you by charging you the real subscription fee every month for a while. Went through that once and nearly committed hara-kiri before I was finally able to unsubscribe after a half-dozen transoceanic (across two oceans that is) calls.

Anyway, the point is, will someone here be able to get me those two articles when I ask? Would like to know in advance so I can mentally prepare LOL. Thanks. (Evidently the noms and winners will be some time early summer this year.) --Softlavender (talk) 08:36, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

@Softlavender: Y Got you covered. - NQ (talk) 09:12, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Excellent, thanks. Later, Softlavender (talk) 09:13, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Alexa.com

Moved from Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request

 – - NQ (talk) 18:00, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Anyone with access to Alexa.com account?
—M@sssly^✉ 09:07, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Download full KML files for Rivers and Canals

Moved from Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request

 – - NQ (talk) 11:08, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Through Wiki itself, Wmflabs and GeoHack tools, Wiki provides an abundance of world-wide river and canal information. What appears to be missing is the ability to download the river's or canal's complete KML files. They seem teasingly close; I have to believe that there must be a KML-file-like resource information underneath your maps.

Recently, now that Google Earth Pro has become available for free, it offers exciting possibilities to merge personal photographs onto maps. However rivers and canals are still omitted on the Internet. Yes, it has has free flight, driving and geodetic KML files; just no river and canal KML.

Could any of Wiki, Wmflabs or Geohack be easily enhanced to download KML files? For example, I would dearly love KML for the 1) Nile, 2) Elbe, 3) Danube, 4) Amsterdam-Rhine canal and 5) Main-Danube canal, among others.

For Wikipedia, are the benefits worth the difficulties? Please share. I want to know.. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.242.17.191 (talk • contribs) 10:51, 13 May 2015‎

This isn't really the place to ask. You might try wp:VPT. My guess is that Google's lawyers warned them off the legal risks of publishing erroneous nautical charts. LeadSongDog come howl! 16:22, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

How can I get a passage from the book "International handbook of universities"?

Moved from Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request

 – - NQ (talk) 23:31, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

I cheeked in all my country's libraries and I didn't find even 1 duplicate of this book (from years 2014-2015) in spite of we have the greatest libraries. I just need to see a passage on the university "UAFM" (Kiev medical Institute) . I'm looking for any service for free or for money, that will enable me to reach this passage. Thanks --149.78.38.232 (talk) 08:27, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

It might be because it is very expensive, so that few libraries buy it. OCLC 897478417 shows the 2015 26th edition as US$890. There's a 1993 13th edition showing in Krakow at the Medical Library of the Jagiellonian University, and there's a 2003 17th edition in Budapest at the Central European University library. Your best bet, though is a 2013 25th edition at the Open University (ISBN 9781137293725). Is there someone who could play fetch? LeadSongDog come howl! 16:59, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

If anyone's looking, it is listed as Kyiv Medical Institute UAFM (Ukrainian Association of Folk Medicine) in the handbook. It is available through the World Higher Education Database Online (WHED Online) database. Till last year, it was accessible through Palgrave Macmillan, but now it is hosted by The International Association of Universities (IAU) at whed.net. An entry for the institution which was last updated in November 2008 is available in the non-subscriber area of the website. You can also get in touch with a document retrieval service to source it for you. I highly recommend Dmitri and his team over at Artrieve. - NQ (talk) 11:00, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

National libraries

I recently tried to edit this page to state that public libraries and national libraries might also have subscriptions to resources (like JSTOR), but @Softlavender: removed it with the edit summary 'not an improvement'. I added it because national libraries have more purchasing power (and better resources) than the local libraries they support, and I wanted to bring that to everyone's attention as a viable alternative and supplement to using this page. I would appreciate it if there would be more discussion of state or national libraries on this page, as their remit does not only cover material published in that country, but more general works as well, which may be more accessible by joining the national or state libraries. --110.20.234.69 (talk) 06:46, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia offers subscriptions to JSTOR, etc., and if the user doesn't have a subscription, this resource exchange page does. There is no reason to advise any Wikipedia user to travel to a library for anything except books (those not viewable on GoogleBooks), because those are something the Resource Exchange participants may not have. You should not be making changes to "official" Wikipedia Project pages without Talk page discussion and consensus. Softlavender (talk) 07:18, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

National libraries may offer subscriptions that Wikipedia does not. I was not advising travel to a library, simply accessing it. Why should I "not be making changes to "official" Wikipedia Project pages without Talk page discussion and consensus", when this is the encyclopedia anyone may edit, and I thought (and still do think) that pointing out the national libraries is beneficial to this page? --110.20.234.69 (talk) 08:41, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Helpful pointers are always welcome. I've re-added your suggestions. Thanks. - NQ (talk) 09:15, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Editing Stale Requests

I am going through the stale requests and been trying to locate references for requests that haven't been fulfilled. I've located a few references and sent them to the users who requested them.

However, each of these stale pages say to not edit the contents of the page. How can I prevent other researchers from duplicating the stale sources that I've fulfilled if I can't edit the page? --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 22:36, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

The archival notice to not edit is just a suggestion to avoid accidental edits that might go unnoticed. You can go ahead and move specific sections to the resolved items archive if need be. Shyamal (talk) 04:57, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

I see. But what if I can only fulfill some references of the unfinished request? Do I cross out the resource(s) I fulfilled? --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 02:16, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

You're best off restoring the request to the main page (leave a note behind in the archives where it was removed) in case the author or anyone else needs to respond czar 02:41, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Formatted requests

Would it be useful to preload a request template that (1) confirms that the requester has tried contacting the author, if applicable, (2) provides a full citation, ideally with a URL to the journal or WorldCat? I think we could do a better job of helping editors do better research themselves while making it easier for editors to fulfill their requests. czar 03:24, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

@Czar: i don't know about contacting authors, but i was thinking the same idea. Maybe use the cite templates already used: book, journal, news etc. That'd cover a lot of the requests, and maybe have them sorted by the type of reference required. I was also thinking of having a parameter or such where if a specific TWL resource is needed, it can be included so users with access can help. Another user proposed a template that could be used here.--MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 03:54, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Name

I think "interlibrary loan" might be a better name for this page, given that it's what other similar services are called. czar 04:50, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

@Czar: I see what you mean, but not all requested resources are from libraries (e.g. journal articles from publishers). --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 23:49, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

It's more to say that we're functioning like a library. I know that it certainly wouldn't be possible for me to do these harder requests (print scans) without access to brick-and-mortar libraries. czar 00:09, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

@Czar: Very true. My local library has come in handy with access to online databases that I can use to help out here at the RX. Some requested sources I can locate in a library, but require an actual scan. There should be more organization here on the RX about what type of resource is needed, (journal, newspaper, book etc.) and where they can be found (online or library) --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 00:48, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Three months?

Our archive timeout is currently three months with no reply... that's a long time. I suggest we shorten it to 60 days. If we haven't fulfilled a request in that time, it isn't happening. We should also be quicker to refer elsewhere if we're unlikely to fulfill the request. czar 01:14, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Contents box is oddly placed

Can we get the table of contents either to the top of the page, or have a separate one for 'New requests'? Currently it sits at the top of New Requests but lists content for the entire page, which is rather weird.-- Elmidae 13:36, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Workupload.com is possibly malicious

I got an e-mail today from User:Dr Lol in answer to a request (although they have not noted that on the request page) with a link to Workupload.com. My Norton Security is telling me this is a dangerous virus-containing site. This page from another security organisation also says the site is problematic. There is at least one link to this site currently up on the Resource Request page. I suggest that it is taken down, at least for now. Is anyone else using this site? SpinningSpark 12:45, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Just a brief note: I don't know why Dr Lol suddenly appeared here and is filling Rx requests. He seems to be German however, and workupload seems to be a German site. I don't know how widely used it is in Germany, but AFIK no one on en-wiki RX uses it to fill requests. BTW, I got a workupload link from Dr Lol several days and clicked and downloaded and saved it. It was missing a page though so he then resent my Rx request as a PDF instead. Softlavender (talk) 13:59, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

I've received files from the same site as well. The site seems to be okay when I downloaded the files. It could possibly be Norton. I'll look into it. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 21:23, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Bot to auto-archive {{Resolved}} requests

How do we not have a bot that automatically archives requests marked with {{Resolved}} (after a set time)? I know Commons has something like that. Not getting a whole lot of detail from the above apart from that a previous bot tried and failed... but we're on some later incarnation of that mentioned talk archive bot anyway. czar 14:43, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Moreover, why are the requests stored by year and separated by fulfilled/unfulfilled rather than just dumped into a single /Archive_# directory? It would make auto-archiving easier to run. If there's no opposition, I can set it up. czar 23:25, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

All right, I set up User:ClueBot III/ArchiveThis to automatically run on sections marked as {{resolved}}. We'll see how it goes, and if all's well, I'll clean up the rest of the old directories to match (year format → Archive # format, like the major noticeboards). czar 01:33, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks! Shyamal (talk) 09:14, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

@Czar: Will this bot work with archiving the stale requests that have already been marked resolved? Some of them have a date and some don't. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 23:49, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

It should automatically archive sections marked as {{Resolved}} and then count 90 days for the stale threads before archiving. Bot's having some issues staying up, though, and the maintainers haven't been able to answer why it isn't running properly on this page. Something I should look into eventually czar 04:51, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

• Okay the new bot appears to be working. I plan to convert the old archive format to the standard "/Archive #" format unless there are objections. czar 16:17, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

@Czar: I think the archive you just made with the bot should be merged with this filled archive, because September and October 2015 are here as well. And since 2015 is almost finished, maybe merge the filled 2015s altogether from now to the end of the year. You could convert the other years, but I'd wait for 2015 to be finished, then convert that year. Also, I haven't seen the bot run in the stale requests. I've seen requests marked resolved there as well, but not moved. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 20:55, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

The bot has run on a few stale requests. The 2015 archive itself is very long and should be broken into several pages. I'll look into it czar 06:01, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

@Czar: I meant the ones that were already archived then tagged resolved such as in here. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 23:17, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

It seems like the bot has been shut off and the maintainer is indefinitely blocked as well. So it is back to manual archiving. Shyamal (talk) 13:15, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

@Shyamal: I've just noticed that Cluebot III is now archiving the resolved requests. I'll keep watching to make sure this archiving is regular. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 02:50, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

RX bullet points

Hello.

I was looking through the bullet points on the Resource Exchange (making a request, and fulfilling a request) and I thought that each of these sections was a bit too long. I have a general idea about what should stay, and what should be removed, but I thought I'd propose the idea first. Are there specific bullet points in these sections that you think should be removed or reworded? --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 22:20, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

@MrLinkinPark333: Agreed! Many of the bullet points are either self explanatory or redundant - what would you propose removing? Sam Walton (talk) 13:05, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

Is this an acceptable request?

Would it be acceptable to just ask for any sources that can be found (that has not already been used) for an article I am working on, or is that too excessive? Thanks, – jona ✉ 20:17, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

@AJona1992: As a practical matter, that's a hard request to fulfill. You know your subject better than we do, presumably, so you'd be more likely to know what resources are useful. Additionally, there are copyright concerns in sending large amounts of material that aren't being used for a specific purpose. I'd recommend doing some searching on WorldCat and then asking for specific things that look useful. ~ Rob^Talk 01:38, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

jona, the Reference Desk, WP:RD, is intended for such broad requests. Then you can come back here to the extent they suggest sources you do not have access to. John M Baker (talk) 12:40, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies, I'll check myself if I can find any sources that I need. Best, – jona ✉ 14:26, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

Library Genesis/Sci-Hub

Given the legality issues surrounding Library Genesis and Sci-Hub, and our ongoing access donation partnerships with parties involved, I've removed the suggestion to use these from the page. Someone added a note asking for a talk page discussion if anyone did so, so here it is. Sam Walton (talk) 16:10, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

"Someone" was Piotrus, who also asked to be pinged. --Worldbruce (talk) 16:40, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, User:Worldbruce, for pinging me. Given it is undeniably the most useful resource, and has been discussed by mainstream publication like Science ([6]), I do not think censoring its existence and hiding our head in the sand is doing anything but hurting our editors. I am open, however, to adding a note saying something like ("editors are advised that there are legal disputes surrounding this website and its use is not endorsed by the community; the listing here is merely informative"). Again, let's keep in mind that our goal is to build an encyclopedia, our partnerships still don't provide all the resources we need, and LG/SH do. We don't have to endorse it, but we should inform editors this option exist so they can exercise their own judgement.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:50, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

Since there are no objections to my proposal, I have restored the entry with a warning notice. I will note that if we allow comments like [7], which in essence are asking for copyrighted materials, and answers that promise to share such materials despite this being a copyvio practice, we are already on the "technically illegal" side of the fence here. Further, such activities as suggested in said discussion are much more problematic (clear intent to violate copyright) then a merely informative listing about a service. Feel free to reword my warning, if you can think of a better formulation to legally cover our a$$. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:16, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

I have some discomfort with our recommending sources such as Sci-Hub, particularly in light of the opposition from parties with whom Wikipedia has ongoing access donation partnerships. I don't think the warning legend gets us there, since context shows that we are recommending that users consult these resources. I don't think copyright owners have the same problem with limited provision of sources to editors working on Wikipedia articles. Sam Walton and Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus, do you have any further thoughts? Anyone else? John M Baker (talk) 21:45, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

I too am uncomfortable with this. Might I offer another suggestion in lieu of the current wording:

"Note that sites like LibGen and Sci-hub offer direct, free access to a very large range of publications, however there are serious legal questions around their use and neither the WMF nor the Wikipedia community endorses them."

This approach flips the intent. It warns primarily, as it informs--rather than suggesting use explicitly, with a warning as an addendum. Ocaasi (WMF) (talk) 18:00, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

That seems better to me. John M Baker (talk) 18:19, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

I am fine with the revised warning proposed above. I do think that the "the listing here is merely informative" sentence from my original warning can be retained as well, as it further stresses we are not endorsing the use of those sources. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:02, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

Cool, Piotrus. Would you go ahead and make that change if no one else objects? Cheers, Ocaasi (WMF) (talk) 18:00, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

Actually, I think it's better without adding "the listing here is merely informative." Ocaasi's language fully communicates that Sci-hub and LibGen exist, there are legal questions around their use, and we do not endorse them. John M Baker (talk) 18:54, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

Agreed. I like the wording as it is. Sam Walton (talk) 16:04, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

I've edited to provide a slightly revised version of Ocaasi's language. I also took out the bullet, so that it is not presented as one of the project's "tips" for finding sources. John M Baker (talk) 17:05, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

ResearchGate and Academia?

I see several requests on this page for articles that are freely available on the authors' ResearchGate and Academia.edu pages. Why does the heading refer people to "legally dubious" sources like SciHub and LibGen, but not these legitimate sources? Muzilon (talk) 22:37, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

I believe both of the former require membership (albeit free) to access content, while the latter do not, and so might be available to a larger section of users.-- Elmidae (talk · contribs) 06:25, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

archiving bot status

I've noticed that, since after October 31st, Cluebot III hasn't been archiving resolved requests. Does anyone know why this is happening currently? --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 03:41, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

The status listed on User talk:ClueBot Commons is not very illuminating. It has said since January 2016 that "ClueBot III is currently not archiving some talk pages, this issue is being investigated." In October 2016, when it was archiving resource requests, it tended to archive threads twice (see [8]). I've manually removed the duplicates and archived the accumulation of resolved threads. --Worldbruce (talk) 19:43, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

A-Z help?

I've been working on a tool of potential use to contributors here - an A-Z list of which periodicals are indexed by which TWL database. As you'll see, though, the search functionality is hacked together and is not private. Anyone have ideas/capability to make this better? Nikkimaria (talk) 18:27, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Use of Dropbox

Occasionally editors post links to Dropbox accounts containing copyrighted articles. Should we be concerned about this? I'm a bit concerned that posting links to copyrighted material could distress publishers. Emailing the link directly to the requesting editor may be a better way to go. Meanwhile, should we make a practice of deleting such links? John M Baker (talk) 20:59, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

When Inter-Library Loan fails?

I encountered a problem that I suspect will become a growing issue.

My local public library has been rather supportive of my Wikipedia research, offering JSTOR access & almost always successfully fulfilling ILL requests. (Although the staff seems intent on purging older works I consider standard reference works.) However, lately I found one book I needed to pay a fee to borrow a specific book -- a requirement Duke University imposed, not my library. And now I found another book I requested is reportedly not available for loan thru WorldCat; although a quick web search found it at three libraries not included in WorldCat for some reason, it's beginning to appear that I will either need to pay a fee to borrow that book -- or pay around $100 for a copy. (Academic books are often pricey, due to cost of production as much as avarice.)

The point is that as contributors to Wikipedia, the time when the cost of researching articles is little more than our time & a negligible cost of research is coming to an end. As useful as the Internet is, not everything is online, & much of it that is online is not free (either in terms of license or money). We've extracted the greater part of what is free on the Internet & added it to Wikipedia; to continue to improve content -- as opposed to adding more stubs or articles with obsolete information -- contributors will increasingly need money in some form to access the materials they need. -- llywrch (talk) 23:36, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

@Llywrch, depends on your library and institutional arrangements, as it always has. Some American states have unlimited, free interlibrary loan, and most universities are practically unlimited. This said, power ILL users are a drain on the system. On one hand, that's what it's for, and on the other hand, libraries with admin breathing down their necks to cut costs don't want to see ILL used for non-essential loans. The mission of your local library has likely changed, too. My local library wants to deaccession at least a third (half?) of its increasingly outdated print collection and become more of a community space. While this saddens me and the community doesn't appreciate what it's throwing away, it's easy to see that the type of research behind WP articles is better aligned with university than local library patronage. I recommend making connections with a local university, either through a faculty/dept sponsor or through the library itself to get on their ILL service. University digital ILL can (usually?) include chapter scanning from their own collection, which is helpful if you're remote. (Only one step away from getting professional help with the bibliography.) I also recommend the Wikipedia:Visiting scholar program, which can help connect you with a local university if you need help getting started. czar 02:32, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

@Llywrch: The richer universities will always cover these costs for students and faculty, and we have enough volunteers from the more "privileged" institutions to cover requests. Please do request those books at RX even if your own attempt at interlibrary loan fails, as others may well succeed. I know, for instance, that my university library will provide me books and theses (even rare, fragile ones) from Duke for free. I recently provided a copy of an old 1930s falling-apart manuscript, of which there are only two known copies in the world, to an editor from Duke, no charge to me. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 03:11, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Copyright

I'm here because of the solicitation on my watchlist. I'm fairly horrified to see that, while lip-service is paid to copyright concerns, the practise is likely to violate them. For example, I see a request for an article from the Financial Times. Passing on the full text of such an article would clearly violate their terms: "Except as set out above, you may not copy FT content from FT.com or any third party source of FT content such as news aggregators and you may not republish or redistribute full text articles, for example by pasting them into emails or republishing them in any media, including websites, newsletters or intranets." Most newspapers with a paywall will have similar terms I suppose. If this is not done properly, then this is just asking for trouble. Andrew D. (talk) 11:33, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

I'm out of my depth here, but I'd assume that newspaper articles accessed via a library subscription might have different terms of use than these. I don't know really. But at least for electronic journals, every time I've bothered to read the terms of use, it has invariably been the case that sharing articles with individuals or small groups was permitted for non-commercial purposes. – Uanfala (talk) 14:16, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

@Andrew Davidson: Thank you for your concerns. The terms of use of a website do not equate to copyright law. If an editor were to breach the terms of use of a website, at most, their access to the website would be rescinded. Assuming that the materials were used only for scholarly research to improve an article on Wikipedia, there would be no damages related to the breach of the terms of use that would allow the operator of the website to sue. Having said that, almost all university library subscriptions come with terms of use that allow limited copying for scholarly use. Note that many websites attempt to make claims about copyright law that are simply untrue, such as the claims spelled out in the website you linked.

As for copyright law, the fair use exemption applies in the United States. The four prongs of the test for fair use applied by the courts are purpose and character of the use, nature of the copyrighted work, amount and substantiality, and effect upon the work's value. We provide resources only for non-profit educational purposes, which is favorable for the first prong of the test. The factual nature of the works we share (as opposed to fiction) is favorable for the second prong. We always send only the minimum amount necessary for improvement of an article, which weighs favorably for the third prong of test, even if that minimum amount is the whole work (see the Ninth Circuit's decision in Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corporation). And the effect on the work's value is negligible, as we share only with a single person rather than with the public. We're hitting every point necessary to qualify for fair use, so there is no copyright issue here. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 23:32, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Wikimania outreach

To anyone who may be attending Wikimania, demonstrating interest in this lightning talk would help ensure I'm able to deliver a quick blurb about what the Resource Request is and how we can help content creators to a relatively large audience. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 17:28, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Database suggestions requested for The Wikipedia Library

At The Wikipedia Library we want to make sure that you have the resources you need to write great articles. We've got a great collection of resources (including more than 80,000 journals!) from over 60 partners already available, and have some top priorities that we're working on adding, but we want you to tell us which databases we should be focusing on! If there's a paywalled database/publisher/archive that you often request content for here, please add a request on our requests page. And if the site is already there, add a +1 and any relevant details about the material you need so that we know there's additional interest - it helps us prioritise and also helps when we pitch the program to them! Thanks, Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 19:05, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

Guide for access to research: looking for early readers

To help researchers (and Wikipedians), I've been collaboratively working on a now 24-option guide about how to access sources when you don't have access to them. The folks at WP:RX are pros at this kind of digging. Could you give it 10 minutes and feel free to make comments, suggestions, corrections, or additions? Don't hesitate to be bold :)

You're a Researcher without Access to Research: What do you do?

Thank you!

Jake Orlowitz Ocaasi (WMF) (talk) 18:47, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

@Ocaasi (WMF): Great idea. I have added my 2 cents. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 04:45, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

Most requested sources

As part of an investigation to find potential desired Wikipedia Library resources, I ran a quick query to find the most requested sources on the Resource Exchange, and thought I'd share it here for anyone who might be interested. The data was collected by using the API's Extlinks module to find the top 100 links in the resource exchange's archive. I then removed any file-sharing websites and consolidated URLs for the same publisher or website, but left in links such as DOI or WorldCat (which aren't actually the subject of the request). You can find the results in the collapsed section below:

Data

Organisation/Website Domain(s) Number of links DOI dx.doi.org, doi.org 691 WorldCat (OCLC) worldcat.org 567 JSTOR jstor.org 481 Google Books books.google.[com,ca,co.uk,co.in,co.il, co.br, co.au] 378 National Center for Biotechnology Information ncbi.nlm.nih.gov 317 Taylor & Francis tandfonline.com, informaworld.com 239 NewsBank nl.newsbank.com, docs.newsbank.com 221 Wiley onlinelibrary.wiley.com 213 WebCite webcitation.org 203 ProQuest pqasb.pqarchiver.com, search.proquest.com 124 Springer link.springer.com, springerlink.com 118 Elsevier ScienceDirect sciencedirect.com 114 Internet Archive archive.org, web.archive.org 103 Newspapers.com newspapers.com 102 Magnolia Press mapress.com 99 HighBeam highbeam.com 95 Cambridge University Press journals.cambridge.org 73 New York Times select.nytimes.com, query.nytimes.com, nytimes.com 60 HathiTrust catalog.hathitrust.org, babel.hathitrust.org 48 Nature nature.com 45 Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu 45 BioOne bioone.org 40 The Times thetimes.co.uk 35 Ingenta ingentaconnect.com 34 ResearchGate researchgate.net 31 EBSCO connection.ebscohost.com 25 Brill booksandjournals.brillonline.com, referenceworks.brillonline.com 25 Biodiversity Heritage Library biodiversitylibrary.org 22 IEEE ieeexplore.ieee.org 18 NRC Research Press nrcresearchpress.com 18 GenealogyBank genealogybank.com 17 Wall Street Journal wsj.com 16 Amazon amazon.com 15 Science (AAAS) sciencemag.org 15 Academia.edu academia.edu 15 LWW (Wolters Kluwer) journals.lww.com 14 CEEOL ceeol.com 14 Open Library openlibrary.org 12 Questia questia.com 12 De Gruyter degruyter.com 12 Oxford University Press oxforddnb.com 11 Time time.com 11 Trove trove.nla.gov.au 11 CSIRO Publishing publish.csiro.au 11 The Royal Society rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org 10 Harvard Library hollis.harvard.edu 9 Psychiatry Online ajp.psychiatryonline.org 9 SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System adsabs.harvard.edu 9 HighBeam business.highbeam.com 9 ACS Publications pubs.acs.org 9 GeoScienceWorld jpaleontol.geoscienceworld.org 8 New Scientist newscientist.com 8 Edinburgh University Press euppublishing.com 8 Chicago Tribune articles.chicagotribune.com 8 Google News news.google.com 8 LA Times articles.latimes.com 7 Informit search.informit.com.au 7 HeinOnline heinonline.org 7 Cat.Inist cat.inist.fr 6 Lyell Collection sp.lyellcollection.org 6 Gale Access My Library accessmylibrary.com 6 Sunday Times thesundaytimes.co.uk 6 CiNii ci.nii.ac.jp 6

These results aren't necessarily directly the most requested sources, as some links (especially, for example, Google Books) are more likely to be responses to requests. Given the number of file sharing links, though, I think this paints a fairly good picture of where most requests are made.

Of interest may be that 1309 links were to websites that you can already request a free account for through TWL, and 1216 were to websites we're now considering (if we weren't already). This analysis has already led to agreements with two new partners from the list that we hadn't previously considered, who will be announced in a couple of months. Let me know if you have any questions! Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 12:59, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for this; very interesting. I wonder if it would be worth updating the notice that comes up when you click "Create New Request" to include a link to TWL so people can check? More aggressively, could a bot patrol this page and if it sees a request for a link to a database, post a link to TWL? It should probably only do that for the first poster to a section, and have an opt-out option. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:23, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

@Mike Christie: It's an interesting idea, and one I'd considered briefly. The main reason I didn't pursue it yet is that RX is really designed for editors looking for individual documents rather than access to broad collections for longer periods of time. Under the current model we do have limited numbers of accounts for most publishers, and while we don't dissuade people from applying, I'd rather we prioritised editors who think they could make use of access for more than one or two documents. That said, we're working on some changes (expect to hear more in the next couple of months) that will see over half our collection available at the individual resource level, immediately, without requiring applications and year-long accounts. When that's in place, I think it could be a great idea to look into something like the bot idea you proposed, for content available through those publishers. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 11:18, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

@Samwalton9 (WMF): A few thoughts... Any chance you can connect with Magnolia Press? One of its journal, Zootaxa, is the go-to source for new animals. That journal receives so many submissions that it publishes multiple papers on a daily basis. I think it will benefit many users. For Nature, I know that it already grants access to the full article for public who accessed it through a news article from its permitted list of news organization. It may be easier to persuade them when they already grant limited access under a similar program. As for the current sign-up model, I understand that some have caps because it reached the maximum number of users registered with the partnered organization. Wouldn't it be possible to convince the publishers to switch the current metric (number of maximum users) to "number of concurrent users" or "total number of access per month"? OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 05:09, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

@OhanaUnited: Thanks for your thoughts! Magnolia Press is one of the publishers that I'm making attempts to connect to, though I've yet to hear back from them. We're having a very promising conversation with SpringerNature at the moment, and I expect you'll be hearing good things before the end of the year. Yes, that's definitely one way we could do it, but the overhead for work involved by account coordinators goes up if we're monitoring per month, for example. We're working on a broader solution (see the blog post linked in my previous message), where for over half of our content you soon won't need to sign up for an account at all! Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 13:44, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

@Samwalton9 (WMF): Another big publisher that should be contacted is Wiley, which I find it surprising to be not available yet. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 05:21, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

@OhanaUnited: We've had a number of conversations with Wiley over the last few years but haven't been able to reach an agreement with them yet. They're absolutely one of our top priorities though! Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 10:56, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

The list is very interesting, and a reasonable way to prioritize bringing publishers on board. Another way to look at requested sources at the Resource Exchange is how long it takes volunteers to supply them. For Wiley, 79% of requested articles have been offered within 24 hours, rising to 87% within 48 hours, and 94% within a week of the request. Wiley seems to have become easier for the volunteer base to access, with 100% of requests in the past 18 months being offered to the requester within 48 hours, and 100% of requests in 2017 being offered within 24 hours. Wikipedians can obtain the full text of major publishers' digitized content fairly quickly and easily through the Resource Exchange.

The resource requests that go unfilled, or unfilled for a long time, are those where we know which libraries hold the material needed, but there are no volunteers with ready access to those libraries, and the material is not loanable or inter-library loan is not free. Ten additional volunteers or so, each with unfettered access to a different major repository (say Cornell, Library of Congress, National Library of Australia, National Library of Scotland, UC Berkley, University of Chicago, University of Iowa, University of Texas, University of Washington, and University of Wisconsin-Madison), and able to fill one request a month, would give Wikipedians timely access to all but the most obscure sources they request. --Worldbruce (talk) 17:28, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Great insight; that Wiley analysis is super interesting. Did you generate those numbers, or is this data from somewhere else? The issue of physical location and access to libraries is definitely an interesting one. We found in a recent survey that content not being available online is as much of an issue for editors as paywalls. I brainstormed some thoughts recently about a tool that editors could privately put their username and location into, so that other editors could easily search for editors within some reasonable distance of a particular library. The editors' locations wouldn't be tied to their username up until they accepted a request from another editor. This could help increase the pool of editors who are putting their name forward for this kind of thing by reducing the level of outing involved. Just a showerthought I had recently - not sure the benefits would outweigh the implementation time/cost. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 13:03, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

@Samwalton9 (WMF):Unfortunately, the available data isn't well enough structured for anything but a brute force attack. I had the feeling from several years volunteering at the Resource Exchange that requests for digital content from the major publishers (Cambridge, Elsevier, Sage, Springer, Taylor & Francis, and Wiley) are filled very quickly. To see if the data supported my gut feeling, I examined by hand every section in the resource request archives that contained the word "wiley" in source. Doing so, I found requests for 183 individual items. That's somewhat below your count of 213 for Wiley, but sometimes the same url is mentioned multiple times within a request thread, and occasionally a responder will mention a Wiley url that the requester hasn't asked for (e.g. "did you know that there's another paper on the subject at ...").

For each item requested, I compared the signature timestamp of the request with that of the reply that offered the requested source. Signature pairs were missing for 8 of the 183 requests. Although the times could be extracted from the page history, I didn't want to go to that much trouble, so I threw out those 8 and analyzed the remaining 175. The results showed what I expected, that requests for Wiley content rarely take more than a day or two to fill. There are some intriguing shifts over time, but I can only speculate as to why. Of the 11 requests that took longer than a week to fill, 10 were in the period from December 2013 to January 2016. Editors come and go, so we may have been short of responders with Wiley access in that period. Or perhaps Wiley content was less freely available through libraries during that period.

Many editors, myself included, choose not to disclose their location, but based on those who do disclose, responders seem to be concentrated in London, Toronto, the East Coast of the U.S., and the West Coast of the U.S. There are great libraries in those places, so resource request works reasonably well. My experience with requests that go unfilled or take a long time to fill is that perhaps 80% of them could be filled from a set of a dozen or so key libraries that evidently are not covered by current responders. Perhaps we need to do a better job of advertising Resource Exchange within Wikipedia. There also may be room to target those libraries when doing outreach to institutions, such as through wikiedu or the Wikipedian in Residence program, or outreach directly to librarians, such as the #1lib1ref campaign. --Worldbruce (talk) 16:59, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Discussion at Village pump proposals

There is a suggestion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#List of sources owned by editors that members of this project might be interested in.--Ykraps (talk) 15:35, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Suggestion to drop the month headings

I suggest to no longer use month headings since the archiving bot is obviously incapable of handling them, and therefore they need to be restored manually all the time — see, [9] and [10] (where the bot archived the headings along with the preceding section). Additionally, again due to the bot's inability to handle them properly, they are causing our archive pages to look messy. See, e.g., https://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:WikiProject_Resource_Exchange/Resource_Request/Archive_46&oldid=837822730 (none of the month headings make sense). My related request to the bot operator(s) was archived without any response, User talk:ClueBot Commons/Archives/2018/April#Archiving h1 headings. — Pajz (talk) 19:57, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Clearly the level 1 month headers are confusing the archive bot, and making a mess of the archive pages. It would be nice if they could remain on the RX page as they break up the stream of requests in the TOC, and highlight the old requests. But unless there is a way to tell the bot to ignore the level 1 headers, it's probably better that they are removed. —Bruce1ee^talk 20:54, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

It should be possible to add something under the header so the bot wouldn't remove it. Something like <|--New requests should go at the bottom -->. Seems to work for DYK but they are using WugBot. --Meanderingbartender (talk) 21:08, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Are those month headers really needed anyway? The month of a request is easy to see in the time stamps. FunkMonk (talk) 21:16, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Restoring the month headings after the bot archives them is an annoyance, but such a minor one that I've continued to restore them rather than invest the time that would be required to make the bot and our process compatible.

As a request-filler, I find the month headings very useful. (1) I visit about 20 different libraries, at different intervals. I know when I was last in a city, so when I return I know I need only look at the most recent n weeks of requests. Unlike FunkMonk, I find parsing out the original datestamp of each request tedious, much harder than jumping to a particular month. (2) When working with the large request page on a mobile device with a small screen, the extra level of month headers saves a lot of scrolling and searching. (3) When the archiving bot stops working (which it does several times a year), and archiving must be done manually, it's easier to archive one month at a time.

It's true that the archives look messy because of the way the bot archives the month headings, but hardly anyone but the bot ever looks at the archives. Regular denizens of WP:RX know that the bot-archived month headings are meaningless. That isn't a powerful reason to get rid of the month headings on the active requests page. --Worldbruce (talk) 23:46, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Fair enough, I was asking more out of curiosity than from having any preference. FunkMonk (talk) 23:48, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Duration of a FOIA request

Don't know if here is the right place for such a question, do not edit here usually. Almost a year ago, I submitted three I guess rather simple FOIARs to the CIA. Up no know I did not get any reply besides an early confirmation. Is that the normal case? The requests are rather uncontroversial "archival" ones, the papers were written between 1951 and 1978, so I do not believe that it was refused. Or could it be a problem that I am foreign (german) national? Has anyone experience with that?--Antemister (talk) 16:51, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

@Antemister: This talk page is definitely not the right place for it, but that's (unfortunately) a normal waiting time. Shoot me an email and I can help you – I currently serve as the executive director of a freedom of information nonprofit in the United States. Best, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 21:50, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

Requesting resources for Draft articles?

I need an old newspaper item for a new WP article I am drafting. Since WP editors are (as I understand it) supposed to specify which WP article is being improved when we post a resource request, is it going to be a problem if there currently is no WP article? I'm happy to provide a link to my draft, if "proof" is required. --Muzilon (talk) 13:07, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

@Muzilon: Yeah, that's fine. It doesn't matter whether it's in article space, draft space, or userspace, as long as it's related to Wikipedia's goals. I've even asked for something that I had not yet saved, which so, at the point asked, was still a redlink  :) —SerialNumber54129 ^{paranoia /cheap sh*t room} 13:20, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Requests of sources that turn out to be unusable

Is it just me, or do a number of sources one has requested to be unusable when you've got the opportunity to read them? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:57, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

Do you mean that the link is dead, or the content isn't what you were looking for? Sam Walton (talk) 21:37, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

Neither, I mean that sometimes the source just doesn't offer any material that would be worth including. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 07:41, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

Is "a number of sources" include zero? One or more? Or some larger number?

When I research a topic I burn through a lot of leads that have nothing to offer. I don't usually request something here unless I am fairly sure it will be useful. (Don't want to send the assisting editors on a goose chase.) But on a couple of occasions I have been disappointed.

Note that "useful" can also be in determining that a source definitely has nothing to offer, such as not supporting a point claimed. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:45, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

A larger number, basically. I often request a source and then upon receiving it I realize that it isn't really useful for the article I am writing. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 09:11, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

On WP, @Jo-Jo Eumerus:, we call it WP:BEFORE  ;) it's a similar approach really isn't it, in a slightly different way. —SerialNumber54129 ^{paranoia /cheap sh*t room} 10:11, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Not exactly, because the sources for an article are available even before the article is deleted, while I can't tell whether a paywalled source will be useful before I have actually received it. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 10:26, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

If you walk into a library and pick random books off the shelves, then it's not surprising you don't find what you're looking for. —SerialNumber54129 ^{paranoia /cheap sh*t room} 14:58, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps you should adjust your criteria for evaluating potential usefulness? E.g., Google and Google books both will provide snippets from even paywalled items. And checking what other sources cite a source provides some indication of potential usefulness. Of course, if you are looking for sources to support content you have already decided to include, continued failure should be a tip to reconsider your premise. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:05, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

@Jo-Jo Eumerus: I've certainly found many oft-cited sources of little value for adding content to Wikipedia. Still, in academia a loose rule of thumb is that the more useful sources have been used previously by other scholars. Citation counts are helpful, though certainly not definitive. When you have a large number of potential sources to consider, you might prioritize the more frequently cited sources as more likely to be useful. Maybe try Google Scholar (or similar citation metric databases for specific subjects) before making a request. -- Paulscrawl (talk) 02:46, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

In fact, I usually do use Google Scholar; from experience I know it's reasonably complete and doesn't have much of an undue Western bias. I've also noticed that the early GS hits are usually more useful than the later ones, but it's not a reliable relationship at all. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 09:45, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Sci-hub whitewashing

There have been discussions in the past about this page referring to Sci-hub, and whether that is ethically and legally an acceptable thing to do. However, what I frankly find much more dubious is filling requests with content obtained from Sci-hub, Library Genesis and the likes. To be fair, since this is a peer-to-peer exchange and I just sporadically make a request for my own, I cannot be sure this is a "thing" -- though I think it is quite obvious to a regular observer of this page that it is. As far as I'm concerned, I have, in all likelihood, received such content in the past (I can read the date at the bottom of a page, and I'm old enough to know that CUP doesn't allow you to download entire journal volumes ...).

I really don't want to discuss any individual cases -- this is not my point at all --, so I'm not going to give any specific examples. I'm just curious what the general view is on such a practice (should it exist). I think it should be very strongly discouraged. First, if I request something, I don't want to receive pirated content. I'm sure there are people around who don't care, but there are also those who do. They may request their papers here instead of going to Sci-hub themselves precisely because they choose not to support the criminal practices that site is based on. Second, it is effectively a way of whitewashing pirated content. It's one thing to use Sci-hub yourself, for your own, private purposes. You know you where you got it from. But dissipating the material as though it was legitimate is a whole different story. Since you don't declare it, the next person in the chain generally won't know how it was obtained. And then what? They may use it again under fair use or comparable provisions in copyright law, and, in fact, in doing so what they are doing -- without having a chance to know and decide against it -- is advancing the cause of Team Sci-hub, spreading their illegally hosted content throughout the world.

So, where do we stand on this? — Pajz (talk) 20:12, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

I have used Sci-Hub on a number of occasions to fulfill resource requests. The guidelines at the top of the Resource Request page say that Sci-Hub's legality is uncertain, but not illegal. If the consensus here is that it preferable not to download material from them, then I will stop. —Bruce1ee^talk 22:30, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

• Filling resource requests with material from Sci-hub is one of several practices I strongly oppose. Like supplying full book scans, or publicly posting links to unencrypted content, it raises the risk of the Wikimedia Foundation shutting down the resource request service, which would be detrimental to the entire Wikipedia community. --Worldbruce (talk) 22:44, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
• My gut reaction is that the practice should be discouraged. I feel having confidence in the provenance of the document is important, but that's probably not a compelling argument. More compelling is probably that if someone wants a pirated copy, they can and should do it themselves, not ask others to do it for them. If someone knows about Sci-Hub and chooses not to use it but post here instead they either don't want a pirated copy (in which case they shouldn't get one) or they're asking someone else to do the dirty work for them (which is skeevy). Documents requested here should either not be on Sci-Hub (because the requester checked already) or the person wants an unambiguously legal copy (and ought to receive one). Anything else I feel is wasting time. Wugapodes [t^hɑk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɹɪbz] 23:41, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
• I am agree with Bruce1ee's comment. -Gazal world (talk) 10:04, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia Library resources available

You probably saw the watchlist notice (which is how I found out): The Wikipedia Library is offering access to some new collections as well as additional JSTOR accounts. If you're a frequent user here or have wanted to help fill requests this would be a great way of getting access to a lot of articles. You can also get access to a number of resources through the Wikipedia Library Card Platform. Wugapodes [t^hɑk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɹɪbz] 22:30, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Is there a way to see who currently has access to a particular database via the Wikipedia Library Card? The database I want is waitlisted, so I was thinking maybe someone who has access could give me the article at the Resource Exchange Board? Would that be okay? Benjamin (talk) 05:13, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Whether editors can share something through the Resource Exchange depends on the terms of use of the individual databases. You can look at Category:Wikipedians by access to a digital library, but that's an opt in mechanism. It doesn't show editors who have access but haven't chosen to disclose it, and shows editors who no longer have access but haven't removed the userbox that populates the category. You may ask individual editors directly, but you might as well just ask at the Resource Exchange. Volunteers there may not have access through the Wikipedia Library, but most or all of these databases are also available through major research university libraries. --Worldbruce (talk) 05:38, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Linking to ResearchGate

This follows on from a request here. What confidence do we have that journal articles uploaded to ResearchGate are uploaded with appropriate permission from the copyright owner (i.e., the journal)? I requested two articles that I'd been unable to access through Gale and EBSCO, and an editor kindly pointed me to uploads of them on ResearchGate. That satisfied my request, but made me uneasy about possible WP:LINKVIO. Thoughts? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 12:36, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

You can always simply cite them without linking. Benjamin (talk) 13:01, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

This is ResearchGate's statement on copyright: Copyright and ResearchGate. —Bruce1ee^talk 13:04, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Papers available on ResearchGate are typically provided by one of the authors, who in turn are - as far as I know - registered with their institutional email address. (At any rate, the profile pages on ResearchGate are often fairly comprehensive and well-ranked in Google, so if someone really did spend the time setting up and maintaining a fake profile, you would expect that the researcher would notice that and request it be taken down sooner or later.) Also, if you look at the ResearchGate page related to a given paper, it tells you the name of the person who uploaded it. The copyright notice in the paper does not tell you much in this case since it is a fairly common practice that authors receive non-exclusive rights from the publisher to make their papers available online (often after a certain period of time). Obviously, you can't tell from looking at the paper whether the author had permission to upload it, but that is true for copies on university servers as well. I certainly see no need to stop linking to ResearchGate; the situation is different from, say, Sci-hub, whose entire model is based on dissipating copyright-violating content. — Pajz (talk) 14:19, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Email link template

For those of you who are constantly asking people to email you, I've made {{subst:email me}} which will insert a link directly to your email interface. It should always be substituted. Wug·a·po·des​ 04:16, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

How resources are provided

I'm new to RX and would like to know how resources are provided to the individual who requests them. For example, if I were to request a scientific journal article, how would I recieve it? I am asking because I would like to recieve resources without having them e-mailed to me, if that is at all possible. Zach Varmitech (talk) 17:28, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Zach Varmitech, it differs. Most people will ask you to email them so they can send the document back to you via email. Others, including myself, send emails with a link to the requested document (this would not require you to reveal your email address, if that's why you're asking). Recently, I've seen a few people upload papers to some file-sharing site and subsequently post the link here in public (rather then send it in private). However, this is, for good and obvious reasons, discouraged (see the "Fulfilling a request" section). There is, unfortunately, no feature that would allow users to privately send documents to others through Wikimedia servers. — Pajz (talk) 17:41, 31 July 2019 (UTC) (If you do not want to reveal your personal email address, you could also just create a new "anonymous" one and change the email address in your user preferences accordingly. With services like Gmail or Protonmail, this won't take you longer than two minutes.)

Full book scans amendment

Hello. i propose amending We cannot perform full book scans requests due to copyright. to We cannot perform full book scans requests due to copyright. Please ask for specific pages that relate to the article(s) you need them for or something along those lines. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 22:19, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

If doing that would have the desired effect, I would support it wholeheartedly. But I fear that if requesters don't notice/understand/respect the current instructions, more detailed ones wouldn't help. The page is loaded with information. There has been some effort to reduce the overload with small fonts and hidden sections, but it's still a big and busy page (and hidden sections don't hide anything on the mobile interface). Receiving requests for full book scans is irritating, but responding with a reiteration of the instructions usually starts a dialogue about what portion they really need. --Worldbruce (talk) 23:15, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Yeah @Worldbruce: I think you're right that this section is being missed. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 00:44, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Sounds good. In my view, the whole introduction section on this page could really use some (major) update. The long list of items (and the changing font size) doesn't look nice and I doubt many people actually read it. The important stuff is currently buried in a sea of minutiae and many of the points seem unnecessary (e.g. "point to a pre-existing electronic document by giving its URL ( http://... )" - does anyone here need an explanation on how to "point to" an electronic document? ...) or could easily be merged with others. Also, the whole page is a pain to use on mobile devices (even tablets). — Pajz (talk) 06:52, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

I think this added language would be helpful, and it might simplify the negotiations when requesters ask for a full book scan anyway. While the views expressed above on the introduction are well-taken, I don't think adding one short sentence would be a problem.

Of course, this implies that a full book scan would be okay if the source material were out of copyright. I guess that's just a matter of whether some editor is willing to do it. John M Baker (talk) 14:12, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Out-of-copyright books have often already been scanned and uploaded to sites like the Internet Archive and HathiTrust, so all that is required is to give the requester the link. —Bruce1ee^talk 15:43, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

I think it should be added. Even though it will, in all likelihood, be missed by requesters, it will be something to refer them to if they ask for a full book scan. But I do agree with Pajz that the introduction is in need of an overhaul. —Bruce1ee^talk 15:43, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

• How about drawing attention to it a little more? It won't add any more information, or make what's there any more complex, but it might make it easier to see. ——SerialNumber54129 15:48, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
  • That does look more noticeable @Serial Number 54129:. @Pajz: What points would you suggest to clean up besides the url pointing? --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 16:41, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
    • I just swapped the word scan for copy. Perhaps that'd make it a bit more clearer. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 20:24, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Library/A–Z

Im thinking about adding a link from Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library/A–Z to this page so Wikipedians can search whether their specific journal/magazine/news article is possibly available via one of the resources via the wikipedia lirary. The key reason why i say possibly because this search does not state which years are available per each database (especially if one publication is available in multiple databases but different coverages). --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 23:40, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Standardizing format of headers of requests

Stop me if I'm wrong, but I think the most useful header is one exactly like the one I just added: Database: Journal (e.g., Taylor & Francis: Journal of Language, Identity & Education). That way if a WP:RX volunteer doesn't have access to TandF, he/she knows not to even bother... requests for several articles from different databases and different journals would perhaps just list the databases: JSTOR, Taylor & Francis. If standardizing is a good idea, then maybe someone should add a relevant explanation/description to the RX page. ♦ Lingzhi2 (talk) 04:09, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

I think this is a good idea – we could do with a standard. But it may not be that simple specifying one. Not all requests are for papers from journals. Some are for articles from newspapers, which could be sourced from several databases; some are for pages or chapters from books; others are hard to classify. Also it's worth noting that some journal papers are available in more than one database, not just the one the requestor lists in the header. —Bruce1ee^talk 12:04, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

yes, I didn't think of that. Tks. ♦ Lingzhi2 (talk) 14:44, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

If the journal is solely available in one database, that format could make sense, but many journals are available in full text in multiple databases. More useful than the title formatting could be some template that lets other editors know what databases/sources have already been tried so that the lookup labor isn't repeated. (not watching, please {{ping}}) czar 23:12, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

Provide as much detail as possible ...

Could we replace the "or" in "Provide as much detail as possible: a full citation with author, title, publisher, and date or identifiers like DOI, ISBN ISSN, PMID, etc." (introduction) with "and, if possible,"? The current version suggests that it is fine for people to provide only a DOI/link in lieu of a full citation with author, title, publisher, and date. Personally, I just ignore requests with incomplete citations from regular users of the page, but on a more general note, I'm not sure why we would want to encourage such a practice. First, the DOIs are not generally short cuts to the full text of the paper (because: (i) many, particularly major journals are available through a variety of databases and how would somebody know whether their institution provides access through the particular database associated with the DOI? and (ii) many institutions - at least all that I'm affiliated with - use some proxy service to provide access, so DOIs do not work "directly"). Second, if you have access only to the printed version of the journal, it would arguably be easier to just copy and paste from this page and search your library catalogue. Third, requests without full citations make it harder to locate the proper section after you have downloaded/scanned the requested article. — Pajz (talk) 17:52, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

@Pajz: I agree, replacing "or" with "and, if possible" in the instructions is better, although I don't know how many requesters will see that, or how many even read the instructions. Perhaps we should to use an editnotice that displays before the edit window to remind people of how they should formulate their requests.

Regarding requests with incomplete citations, or in some cases no citations at all, often just raw urls, that is a problem. But if I can fulfill those requests, I still just do them. Maybe I should also start to ignore them, unless it's clear the requester doesn't have enough information to provide a full citation. —Bruce1ee^talk 06:51, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

Revised (not watching, please {{ping}}) czar 23:27, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

@Czar: Sorry, I missed this, but thanks. —Bruce1ee^talk 22:33, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Selective early archiving

After consultation with Jo-Jo Eumerus, I'm marking 10-20 of their oldest requests {{stale}} before the usual 90 days are up. Based on past experience, there's very little hope that leaving these conference papers, reports, maps, and non-English sources on the active list longer will result in them being found. Anyone who disagrees with the action is welcome to restore archived requests - perhaps you know that next month you'll visit a library that holds the material. The 90-day cut-off generally works reasonably well, and this one-off early archiving is not meant to set a precedent. --Worldbruce (talk) 17:11, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with this. If anyone thinks they may be able to fulfill a request, they should tag it with {{doing}}, and/or a note. —Bruce1ee^talk 17:33, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

On a related note, I guess many books that people may normally have access to are now inaccessible due to the general coronavirus lockdown (the British Library is shut for one). Could we stop older entries dropping off the page for a while as there are a few that may be easy to retrieve once the lockdown ends. Cheers, Number 57 21:40, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

The archiving period is currently 90 days. What would you suggest? Keep in mind we don't want to leave requests on the page for too long otherwise the list will become unmanageable. —Bruce1ee^talk 22:23, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Perhaps anything added from early-mid March (when several countries started shutting down) could be stopped from being archived, until the page becomes unmanageably long. Alternatively, some kind of notice for people that requested something to remind them to come back whenever might help. I know I'll probably forget about my requests unless reminded... Number 57 22:47, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

The instructions and the list of requests already verge on ineffective and unmanageable, respectively, because of length, so I oppose any additional notice on the request page or keeping requests active longer than 90 days. I also oppose tacking questions that aren't really related onto stale talk page threads, but maybe I'm just an old sourpuss.

When Wikipedia:Teahouse threads are archived, Muninnbot leaves a note on the original poster's talk page telling them where their question has been archived (see, for example, User talk:Cr.attz). Perhaps it, or another bot, could be set up to do something similar with resource requests when they are archived for reasons other than being done or resolved. That would provide a reminder, but keep responsibility on the requester to decide whether and when to request again. --Worldbruce (talk) 23:29, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Fair enough on the first point – if we can get a bot to give notifications, that would be great (and not just for the current scenario – I'm sure I've made several requests historically that have dropped off the list and I have completely forgotten about them). Cheers, Number 57 17:10, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Library: Authentication-based access and the Library Bundle now available!

The Wikipedia Library is pleased to announce the implementation of authentication-based access and the Library Bundle! These new features will help improve your research workflow by minimizing the number of individual logins you need to remember, and by providing on-demand access to a set of partners to all qualifying users without the need for manual application and approval. Along with the launch of Bundle/EZProxy, we are happy to announce several major new partnerships are now available, including large multidisciplinary collections from Springer Nature and ProQuest. Check out your Bundle eligibility and the new available collections by logging in at https://wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org/. Please let me know if you have any questions, and feedback on the new systems can be left at the project page. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 08:41, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

@Samwalton9 (WMF): Yes, I saw that, and I've already made use of it. It's going to be very helpful. Thank you and everyone else at the Wikipedia Library for making this possible. —Bruce1ee^talk 08:48, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, Samwalton9 (WMF), very nicely negotiated! Please pass on my gratitude to all involved, cheers. ——Serial ^# 10:39, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Harvard Library

Very interested in a thesis that is kept at the Harvard Library (Chinese Commercial Organization and Behavior in Shanghai of the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century). I would like to know if there are users here who have access to this library? If there are such users, please write to me. --Алый Король (talk) 04:55, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

Developing This System

Some imagine developing a system of resource exchange & resource request to a mature, stable state, and find this leads to a perhaps controversial ideal. Our goal is not to raise controversy but rather to discover how to achieve a most coherent, simple, and straightforward outcome. The ideal that a developed system of resource exchange & resource request seems to entail is simply free access for all people, to all information, at all times. This way, source verification of Wikipedia content may be fully unencumbered. In this ideal, all people are encouraged to participate, cultivating the feeling of empowerment, participation, community, solidarity, trust, respect. That is, all the positives are cultivated as one, and the benefits of these connected elements multiply, in the way the subconscious mind utilizes them. Meanwhile, the negative outcomes of conflict are avoided, that is, we avoid the injury of conflict in pursuing recognition/compensation perceived as scarce, and we avoid the injury inflicted when access is denied by economic/social inequalities.

The perceived down-side of fully-free information is that one contributing more than another is denied fair recognition/compensation. But it's impossible for restricted public access to facilitate fair recognition/compensation because this restriction violates the information consumer's free will. One cannot be coerced to provide recognition/compensation, because chronic coercion, or denial of free will, is evidence of chronic distrust. Humanity cannot thrive in a state of chronic distrust, and duty/obligation. Recognition/compensation can only be provided by informed free will, manifest only in an environment of universal, mutual respect & trust, equality, autonomy, and universal awareness of all possibilities. When the subconscious mind finds itself in a chronic state of restriction, coercion, and denial of needs, various dysfunctions and pathologies develop in response. Let's build an information system coherent with the realities of human nature, including how to progress toward our peak potential, while truly minimizing all work/cost and eliminating all harm. Rtdrury (talk) 19:03, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Library Bundle

Following on from a discussion I had with Gazal world, I've added a note about The Wikipedia Library Bundle to the top of the RX page. This is to remind requesters that this bundle gives them free and immediate access to a number of reliable sources. I've also added a similar note to the new request template. Please feel free to amend/reword as you see fit. (@Samwalton9 (WMF): FYI). —Bruce1ee^talk 11:45, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

I think, we should specify the databases which are available through Library Bundle. --Gazal world (talk) 16:12, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

@Gazal world: Currently there are 25 databases. That's going to be quite a long list. Wouldn't it be simpler for the user to go to the Library Bundle page and see the list for themselves? —Bruce1ee^talk 16:23, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Maybe some of the most common requested ones could be listed with a note saying whether an account is needed or not. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 19:05, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Hmm. We can list most common requested databases like JSTOR, Oxford, and ProQuest. --Gazal world (talk) 19:20, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Yeah. Also, Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library/A–Z needs to be updated. A link to this could help for users to search if their journal is in an available database or not. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 19:53, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

@Gazal world and MrLinkinPark333: How about four of them: EBSCO, JSTOR, Oxford and ProQuest? I think a link to The Wikipedia Library/A–Z is also a good idea, but you're right, it does need updating (pinging Samwalton9 (WMF) again). But I think we need to be careful not to swamp the instructions with too much detail. —Bruce1ee^talk 21:26, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

@Bruce1ee: Sounds good! Those four cover a general topic of the databases covered. And the other ones that need applications (Gale, Newspapers.com) fall under the Wikipedia Library Card Platform bullet point underneath. So, all of those is covered! :) --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 21:33, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

I've added some of the common databases, plus the database search link. Please check and feel free to amend/reword. —Bruce1ee^talk 07:44, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for this! The A-Z page is pretty out of date and I don't think we're going to spend the time updating it since it takes quite some effort. Instead we're integrating an item-level search tool into the platform next year which should be much more helpful :) Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 10:21, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, that will be very useful. —Bruce1ee^talk 11:02, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing out these offers. All the webpages describing these offers are obscure and hard to find, just like the similar offers of WMF Hungary, so it's good to have an explicit reminder. I'll try to keep these in mind, besides the access that my FSzEK library subscription offers.

Also, isn't Elsevier ScienceDirect the most requested database? – b_jonas 17:41, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

There are requests for articles from ScienceDirect from time to time, but I wouldn't say it's the most requested database. The databases listed at the top of the RX page are purely examples of what is available from the Wikipedia Library. If you feel ScienceDirect should be there, I can add it. —Bruce1ee^talk 21:55, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

No, the ones you listed are fine, especially since they're the ones you can immediately get access to with Wikipedia Library. ScienceDirect access has a waiting list, so you'd probably just ask on RX for someone who already has access. – b_jonas 00:01, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

Library visit

Hi all, I've recently remembered that I have alumni access to the syracuse university library and live close enough that making a trip isn't too awful. The catalog is at https://library.syr.edu/ and I'm going to try and visit it just about monthly (to coincide with the books reaching their due dates). Before I go I'll try to check here for three or four books to get and scan pages (as I just handled Peacemaker's requests, for instance), but if anyone happens to see a book in their collection, feel free to ping my attention to it and I'll see what I can do. The next trip I make will probably be mid-January. Cheers, Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 02:06, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

@Eddie891: That's great. Perhaps, you can add your name with this link in the 'volunteer list' at the top of this page. --Gazal world (talk) 10:28, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks Eddie891, that will be a great help. —Bruce1ee^talk 12:21, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

Hi Eddie891. You should also mention the above library catalogue link in the description. --Gazal world (talk) 13:40, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

Internet Archive

Internet Archive has a fundraising appeal again. Please donate. Melly42 (talk) 20:19, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

"Please replace this subject line with a more meaningful description of the request."

Is there a way to make this more conspicuous (maybe via an edit notice)? I see lots of people (myself included) who do not "replace this subject line"; and well that makes navigation from the page history to their section that wee bit more time consuming... Cheers, RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 14:11, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

The existing edit notice already says quite a lot, so putting in an extra line reminding people to populate the subject line will probably be missed. Perhaps a better place to put it is in the resource request template, something like

<!-- Don't forget to replace the subject line with a more meaningful description of the request --> just before "Thanks, ~~~~".

This may help, although it probably won't work for requesters who replace the entire pre-populated text with their text. I hope I'm making myself clear. —Bruce1ee^talk 16:47, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Good idea, Bruce1ee. --Gazal world (talk) 17:02, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

@Bruce1ee and Gazal world: I've tried this. If you think it's too much feel free to revert. Maybe a different lighter shade of red would be better? RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 17:09, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

@RandomCanadian: That would probably work highlighted in red. And I think the bright red you used is fine – it will be hard to miss. —Bruce1ee^talk 17:13, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Can I just ask for the page number?

I need the page number for this ref[11] because the preview doesn't show what the page number happens to be. So do I ask for the page number on the main page or can I just ask here on the talk page? ApproximateLand (talk) 08:11, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

@ApproximateLand: That looks like the preview of an ebook, which generally don't have page numbers. The Resource Request page is the correct place to ask for the page number – just click on the "create a new request" button. —Bruce1ee^talk 08:26, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. ApproximateLand (talk) 08:29, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia Library - most useful collections

Hello WP:RX regulars. Just wondering which Wikipedia library collections you find most useful for your work at WP:RX? I asked this question one time and somebody responded EBSCO, Gale, and ProQuest. I also recently discovered the library has Newspapers.com too. Any others come to mind? Any special ones I should apply for? I know they're working on a unified search / supersearch, but in the meantime, there is a mountain of collections and I want to get an idea of which ones are worth the time of searching. Thanks. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:01, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

The Oxford suite, Project MUSE, De Gruyter and NewspaperARCHIVE.com are also useful. You can see all the Library's collections here. Those collections showing the book bundle icon are part of the Wikipedia Library Bundle and don't need to be applied for. Access to the Library Bundle is open to editors active for at least six months with over 500 edits and 10 edits in the last month. —Bruce1ee^talk 08:18, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

Everything depends on what you are writing about. Many people use Newspapers.com but for the topics I write about that would be completely useless. (t · c) buidhe 08:30, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

As Buidhe said, it depends on the subject you are working on. JSTOR, Project MUSE, De Gruyter & ProQuest are the most useful database for my work. I work on Indian literature related articles. --Gazal world (talk) 15:06, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

Hathi access

Just a general question, some US universities has opened access to Hathi-scanned books to affiliated person during the pandemic. Is it possible to download these using, using Hathi Download Helper?--Antemister (talk) 14:56, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

I can access Hathi books through my University. But they don't allow downloading. If you are looking for any particular pages, I would happy to help out. --Gazal world (talk) 15:03, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

Antemister, If you mean this utility it explicitly says, "The HDH tool does not work with ETAS access. It is limited to public domain items only." (t · c) buidhe 15:23, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

OK, thanks for the replies, did not look to that page. :Gazal world, have you tried https://sourceforge.net/projects/etasdownloadhelper/?--Antemister (talk) 15:33, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

Antemister Thanks. I will try this tool. --Gazal world (talk) 15:41, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

Can you try if you can take out [12]?--Antemister (talk) 19:08, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

Antemister I would be able to provide only specific pages. please request pages you need at the 'Resource Request' page. --Gazal world (talk) 19:23, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

Ah, "specific pages" can be provided by my local library, but I tried to find out if the complete book to which I currently don't have access can be downloaded. Anyway, thanks for trying out.--Antemister (talk) 21:22, 22 April 2021 (UTC)