Two Wikipedians in Special Residence to start at twelve scientific libraries

‘Wikipedians’ Hans Muller and Arie Sonneveld have been selected to reside at twelve scientific libraries in the Netherlands. Participating libraries vary from the African Studies Centre Library  to the Rijksmuseum Library and Peace Palace Library. From November 2013 until December 2014 the two Wikipedians hope to raise the diversity and quality of Wikipedia through the collections and knowledge present at these institutions, and enhance Wikipedia skills of the staff. A ‘Wikitraining’ for library staff is part of the programme.

Experienced Wikipedians
Sonneveld and Muller are both experienced Wikipedians, having written hundreds of lemmata and revised thousands of articles. Muller is a physicist and an archivist who worked as an astronomer in Rome, as a teacher and as an organizer at Wikimedia Nederland. Sonneveld studied molecular sciences at Wageningen University, worked at scientific bookshops and libraries, and is an editor and translator.

For this project five themes have been selected:
1. Art & culture (libraries from the Rijksmuseum, Filminstituut EYE, Boekmanstichting and Rijksdienst Cultureel Erfgoed)
2. War & peace (libraries from NIOD and Peace Palace)
3. World collections (libraries from the African Studies Centre, KITLV and HIS)
4. Gender & diversity (libraries from Atria and IHLIA)
5. Health (library from NKI-AVL)

Matchmakers
The Wikipedians can connect themes and discover cross connections that will lead to mutual benefit for all participating parties. The project is run under the auspices of the Workgroup Special Scientific Libraries, in which 25 Dutch libraries work together. Read more about the project on Wikimedia (Dutch).