User:Bluerasberry/library

I am offering training to library staff in the New York City area who want to learn more about Wikipedia and related projects. I am doing this as part of my position as the Wikipedian in Residence at Consumer Reports.

Eligibility

Ideal candidates for this awesome free training meet the following requirements:

1. Work or volunteer at a library
2. Want to learn about Wikipedia
3. Live near New York City

I will give priority to librarians who have more of the following characteristics:

1. Can bring their librarian friends and coworkers
2. The people receiving training would, if asked by library patrons, share what they learned with those people
3. Work with university students or researchers of any type
4. Are interested in collaborating with other community education groups in providing or hosting fun research social events
5. At least one librarian at the training could conceivably begin to commit an hour a week to using Wikipedia for that person's own interests and own sake if doing so could achieve outcomes previously met in other ways. In my case, Wikipedia saves time and solves problems, and I would hope it would be the same for others who learn to use it.
6. Might be willing, with support from me and perhaps others, to offer Wikipedia training to library patrons for any reason
7. Are interested in health information

The offer

You, as a librarian, make an appointment with me to receive Wikipedia training. I will also try to coordinate with other Wikipedia users, perhaps from the Wikimedia New York City group. I come to your library and give a lesson about what Wikipedia is, why it matters, and how libraries can use it to their advantage. In return I would like for the librarian to arrange for interested people to become aware of the training and invite them to attend. Hopefully at least three librarians would attend.

If the attendees like the presentation and want further support then I would support them by phone, email, and on Wikipedia, and tell them how to get other support from the Wikipedia community.

There is no further obligation to the library, but in the course of the training I will introduce the Choosing Wisely educational campaign in the examples I use in demonstrations. Choosing Wisely content is evidence-based health research re-written to be comprehensible by a layman audience but including citations to the original peer-reviewed scholarly publications. I would appreciate that if the library should find anyone interested in doing free community health education, particularly people wanting to learn social media, then the library should refer them to me.

The hope

I am hired to share information from an educational campaign called Choosing Wisely. This campaign is organized by the ABIM Foundation and I work for Consumer Reports. The campaign seeks to increase public access to certain healthcare information, and since Wikipedia is the world's most accessed source of health information, it would be nice if this information were on Wikipedia. Since there is so much information in this campaign, some people including Consumer Reports staff have proposed that the most reasonable way to get the information to the interested public would be to support efforts for community members to put information onto Wikipedia. Of those community members who put information onto Wikipedia, some will be interested in healthcare, and of those interested in healthcare, some would consider adding content from the Choosing Wisely campaign into Wikipedia articles. No one who receives the training would ever be asked to do anything that they did not already want to do.

Librarian training is part of a larger and more long-term effort to continually increase access to information, but some immediate effects of librarian training is to start social connections between the library and local Wikipedia users.

Wikipedia and library projects in NYC

Here are some links to past efforts at connecting librarians to Wikipedia.

• Wikipedia:Wikipedia at the Library, a New York City initiative
• Wikipedia Loves Libraries, a global initiative born in New York City

Contact

Contact me here!