Bringing archival collections to Wikipedia with the Remixing Archival Metadata Project (RAMP) editor

Abstract

Wikipedia has been in existence for 16 years, but it was not until recently that GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) institutions started to see it as a trusted source and one they were interested in contributing to. Libraries and archives, in particular, have been slowly embracing the idea of contributing to Wikipedia, often motivated by the prospect of increasing the visibility and impact of their distinctive collections, which have been carefully curated by librarians and archivists alike. Different approaches have been taken by libraries and archives when it comes to contributing to Wikipedia. Some institutions have focused on adding links to Wikipedia articles in order to point back to their unique archival collections, whereas others have concentrated on enhancing the content of existing articles. Another way in which librarians and archivists can work together to share our collections is to collaborate on projects to enrich and repurpose the metadata that has already been created to describe them. The University of Miami Libraries took this approach and developed a tool to facilitate the creation of Wikipedia articles using relevant metadata from the libraries’ finding aids (documents that describe the scope, content, and context of archival collections). In this chapter, we will introduce the RAMP (Remixing Archival Metadata Project) editor and share our experience working on a pilot project conducted to test its viability.