Jere Odell

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    Will Paying Students To Edit result in More Wikipedians?
    (2025-10-19) Mzumara, Tapiwa; MacIsaac, Olivia; Odell, Jere D.
    At Indiana University Indianapolis the University Library hires students as “Wikipedia and Digital Content Specialists” to edit Wikipedia. The students write or contribute to entries related to the central Indiana community where the university is located. The student Wikimedians use the WikiEdu modules to learn to edit and also receive troubleshooting support from peers and academic librarians. After developing a baseline of skills, the students choose from a list of topics and tasks that align with their personal interests. Altogether, the library student employees have created 44 entries and contributed 8,520 edits in less than three years. They have also enjoyed “going down the rabbit hole” and exploring the many quirks of Wikipedia. But what will happen when they graduate or leave the job? This presentation reports on an evaluation of the outcomes of student engagement as it relates to Wikipedia participation during and after being a paid editor. If students are paid to edit, will they choose to continue to engage with Wikipedia? If so, how? What would motivate the students to continue after graduation? This evaluation uses a semi-structured interview format to solicit the opinions of current and former Wikipedia and Digital Content Specialists at IU Indianapolis.
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    PIDs, Wikidata, and Notability on Wikipedia
    (2025-10) MacIsaac, Olivia; Odell, Jere D.
    On Wikipedia [EN], biographies of scientists must meet the criteria for general notability, notability for people, notability for authors, or notability for academics. These criteria require significant coverage in independent, reliable, secondary sources and/or sourced evidence that the person has contributed to changing the field or research or the genre of creative work. Biographies on Wikipedia are assigned a Wikidata entry and these biographies often include a footer linking to other “Authority control databases.” Along with Wikidata, these databases assign the person a persistent identifier (PID). These PIDs may predate the person’s notability and the creation date of their Wikipedia entry. Likewise, as with Wikidata, many of these PIDs have a lower bar for “notability” or rely on different concepts for authority. In some cases, such as ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID), the PID may only be created by the person themselves. Although PIDs may not be evidence of notability, one might assume that a person with PIDs would be on track for meeting the English Wikipedia criteria for notability. This exploratory study, looks at a short list of notable and likely notable scientists (recipients and finalists of the Indianapolis Prize) to identify the prevalence of three PIDs (Wikidata, LCN, and ORCID). We seek to better understand the role of PIDs in the development of a scientist’s public reputation. Do the prevalence of these identifiers precede the creation of Wikipedia entries? Do these identifiers multiply after Wikipedia entries are created? Do PIDs matter for Wikipedia?
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    Lafracoth Illumined, expanded program
    (Indiana University Conscience Project, 2025-08-14) Galvin, Matthew R.; Gaffney, Margaret M.; Galvin, Deborah C.; Larimer, Angeline; Beckman, Emily; Odell, Jere D.; Bielefeld, Sydney
    This expanded version of the program that was distributed at the performance of Lafracoth Illumined contains direct links to the film recordings in the I.U. Media Online Collection, biographies of the troupe act by act synopses links to valuable resources.
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    Library publishing: We can't do everything, so should we just quit?
    (2025-06-12) Molina, Rachel; MacIsaac, Olivia; Odell, Jere D.
    Library publishing programs are often not supported by sales and instead are driven by the values of the library. Typically these values include a preference for non-fee open access dissemination. In this context, library publishing programs are at risk of operating under unsustainable and tight budgets while demand for services is on the rise. This is an equation that can lead to diminishing levels of service and professional burnout for the providers of these services. Library budgets and their investments in journal publishing have been under strain. At the same time, journals, policy makers, authors, editors, and funders expect more and more. Linked-data, persistent identifiers (PIDs), XML, accessibility, funding notifications, glitzy websites - where does it end? Given the demands, what is the least that a library can do to work within the values of the library’s mission without losing professional integrity? This session proposes a model for assessing a library publishing program’s investment in a non-revenue generating open access journal publishing service. The model may be used to help a library make decisions about when to take on new titles. Likewise, it will serve as a tool to identify journals that may be at risk of losing the library’s services. Tools of this nature may provide useful starting points for discussions between libraries and university presses interested in forming stronger university-based publishing initiatives.
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    Library publishing: We can't do everything, so should we just quit?
    (2025-05-05) Molina, Rachel; MacIsaac, Olivia; Odell, Jere D.
    Library budgets and their investments in journal publishing have been under strain. At the same time, journals, policy makers, authors, editors, and funders expect more and more. Linked-data, persistent identifiers (PIDs), XML, accessibility, funding notifications, new formats, glitzy websites - where does it end? Given the demands, what is the least that a library can do to work within the values of the library’s mission without losing professional integrity? How can a library publishing program honor the organization’s intentions to foster and pursue equity for knowledge creators when budgets are tight? This session proposes a model for assessing a library publishing program’s investment in a non-revenue generating open access journal publishing service. The model may be used to help a library make decisions about when to take on new titles or when to launch new publishing initiatives (e.g., monographs). Likewise, it will serve as a tool to identify journals that may be at risk of losing the library’s services. Tools of this nature may provide useful starting points for discussions between libraries, editors, and administration interested in forming or sustaining scalable university-based publishing initiatives.
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    Federal public access: Did it change my life?
    (USAIN/CBHL 2024 Biennial Meeting, 2024-05-06) Odell, Jere D.
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    Graduate Student and Undergraduate Medical Student Adoption of ORCID: Establishing Benchmarks
    (Midwest Chapter/MLA 2024 Conference, 2024-10-11) MacIsaac, Olivia; Morgan, Teryn; Ramirez, Mirian; Odell, Jere D.
    Objective A key use case for ORCID at the university is to support early career researchers, including graduate students and medical students. Librarians at a university with a large medical school have promoted the adoption of ORCID. However, apart from occasional anecdotes, little is known about the outcomes of these efforts. In this study we establish an adoption rate for this population. This study aims to establish ORCID adoption rates among graduate students, providing a benchmark for future efforts. Methods We acquired a complete list of currently enrolled graduate students (2023-2024) from the registrar (n=8180). We randomized these records to create a sample of 375 students. We then coded this sample for the status of the student's ORCID account (unfound, found, likely found, and unable to verify). Results Across the sample we found that 8.5% of graduate students (n=32) had registered an ORCID with identifying information. Another 13% (n=50) of students in the sample appear to have created an ORCID record but have not shared enough data to fully affiliate them. However, this adoption rate varied widely between campus schools. Notably, the School of Medicine demonstrated a higher adoption rate, with 32% (22 out of 69) of sampled students having identifiable ORCIDs. Conclusions The School of Medicine, supported by the Medical Library, has achieved better adoption rates than other schools at the university. With these rates established, the libraries can identify approaches that have been successful and more widely implement them.
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    Beyond the metrics: What do Wikipedia citations mean?
    (2024-06-06) MacIsaac, Olivia; Odell, Jere D.
    Recent studies have demonstrated that Wikipedia citations to scholarly articles may be correlated with higher citation rates in the scholarly literature. It is also the case that Wikipedia serves a key role in the dissemination of public knowledge. Wikipedia has supplanted most encyclopedias as a general knowledge source and is one of the ten-most visited web properties in the world. With this in mind some publishers have made a deliberate effort to contribute reliable, peer reviewed information from their venues to Wikipedia. In far many more cases, volunteer editors cite scholarly articles as needed when creating or improving Wikipedia entries. In this study, we examine citations to an interdisciplinary collection of mostly open access journals published in collaboration with an academic library. We measure the citation rate for these articles prior to and after Wikipedia citation. In addition to quantifying the prevalence of Wikipedia citations to these titles, we identify how these citations are used in Wikipedia. By completing a content analysis of these citations, we identify “impact” beyond a count of mentions. These results contribute toward a better understanding of the value of a Wikipedia citation.
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    OA, public access policies, and the academic library: some questions
    (2023-10-12) Flood, Jamie; Odell, Jere D.
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    One Year In: Growing Capacity to Support GLAM Wiki in Indiana
    (2023-11-10) MacIsaac, Olivia; Flood, Jamie; Byrd-McDevitt, Dominic; Odell, Jere D.
    In 2022, in an effort funded by the Central Indiana Community Foundation, IUPUI University Library began focusing on efforts to leverage the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) to contribute cultural heritage images from Indiana Memory to Wikipedia and to increase community capacity for Wikipedia editing by providing a campaign of public programs, training, and outreach to selected cultural heritage organizations. Now that it has been a year, our project team is excited to share what worked, what didn’t work, and our plans to continue these efforts as we extend this project. In this session, our team will share: Benefits and barriers of the programming as expressed by participating GLAM organizations, Successful and less-successful outreach strategies, Improvements in Wikimedia content related to local efforts to promote diversity, equity and inclusion, New directions in our programming that respond to the challenges of supporting community-based initiatives during difficult times