Francesc Xavier Dengra i Grau, Carme Fenoll i Clarabuch, Vicenç Allué Blanch, Francesc Fort i Silvestre, Francesc García Grimau, and Amparo Pons Cortell

“ Catalan university libraries have become a nexus of both #Bibliowikis and #Eduwiki (educational) programs. University repositories play a key role within Wikipedia: they provide access to sources and can assess the impact of Creative Commons licensing in public knowledge transfer from higher educational institutions to the general public (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Comissió d’Accés Obert, 2020) . Academic libraries possess deep expertise in Open Access research and education. ”

“ Moreover, the issue of gender bias in Wikipedia acquired more significance. In the Catalan-language context, 80 percent of librarians are women while approximately 85 percent of Wikipedians are men (Roqueta, 2014) . Reducing gender bias in Wikipedia became one of the biggest challenges of this case study.
What is more, as a minoritized language (Hawkey, 2018; May, 2013) , editing the Catalan Wikipedia allows librarians to reinforce their role of promoting language diversity, especially in the case of Libraries specializing in local or heritage collections. ”

“ The Catalan Wikipedia (Viquipèdia) is a successful free-knowledge platform with a strong community of editors that has significantly contributed to the normalization of this minoritized language on the Internet. In 2012, the NGO Amical Wikimedia and the Public Library Service of the Catalan Ministry of Culture launched #Bibliowikis, an initiative that has involved several hundreds of librarians and public libraries in the improvement of this version of the online encyclopedia. ”

“ Nonetheless, the philosophy of the organization has always been to promote an endpoint of self-sustainability and scaffolded training among its members and institutions. In the beginning of a project, volunteers and institutions are provided with guidelines and a regionally available volunteer who serves as a truly human support; then there is a progressive decrease in support until the beginners have become competent, and eventually trainers are released to focus on other projects (Fenoll, 2016; MetaWiki, 2014; Proffitt, 2018; Wikimedia Outreach, 2017) . ”

“ Amical Wikimedia is the nonprofit organization that promotes freely accessible Catalan culture and knowledge through the values and engagement of individuals and organizations in Viquipèdia (Amical Wikimedia, 2020; Amical Wikimedia, Qui som, 2020) . It has conducted several projects to achieve Wikipedia’s mission, including the #Bibliowikis project. Since 2012 Amical Wikimedia has been involved with nearly 500 public, academic, and special libraries located within the Catalan-speaking areas (Proffitt, 2018) . ”

“ A loss of the top-down institutional support and outreach, which happened in Catalonia in 2017 with the sudden change of the Head of Public Libraries (Martínez, 2017) , can result in a mid- or a long-term impact decrease of the project. In fact, a loss of volunteering activity has consequently decreased follow-up meetings, libraries involved, and a break of the “librarians train librarians” institutionally agreed-upon activities in the Catalan #Bibliowikis in the latest stages. ”

“ The project involves the so-called Amical-way, in which scaffolded training, long-term self-management, and the geographically available Wikipedian volunteers constitute the three fundamental working pillars. #Bibliowikis’ success has experienced different levels of applicability and regularity over the Catalan-speaking territories, especially in the Land of Valencia and Andorra, and may be endangered by global online dynamics, loss of the volunteering principles, and prioritization of economic resources in the fast-changing Wikimedia environment. ”

“ Organizational priorities and tasks managed by Amical volunteers have been limited due to the community size and a small, internal core of very active members who assume most of the workload (Meta-Wiki, 2014) . In future crisis environments, librarians may increase their workload and diminish their availability for activism. In this way, #Bibliowikis’ life may be endangered despite its prestige. ”

“ In the same regard, librarians have contributed to official, longterm agreements between Amical Wikimedia and UAB or with the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) in order to promote workshops, training, conferences, open-access engagement, and #eduwiki projects with students and professors led by volunteers. ”

“ In all educational levels, a reformulation of didactic approaches is proposed with the addition of new enjoyable distance learning environments and embedding technologies for new generations (Rapanta et al., 2020) . ”

“ Later on, an annual motif was created to bring together the actions of the nearly 400 public libraries involved and the international annual campaign, #1Lib1Ref (in Catalan, #1Bib1Ref) , was also folded into the #Bibliowikis activities with great success.
Wikipedia’s Benefits and Opportunities for Catalan Librarians
What does an eighteen-year-old, computer-savvy Wikipedian working from home have in common with a local librarian? The passion to share information and help citizens. When this symbiosis was recognized by Catalan Wikipedians and librarians, the initial mistrust started to fall. ”