Wikipedia began with its first edit on 15 January 2001, two days after the domain was registered by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. Its technological and conceptual underpinnings predate this; the earliest known proposal for an online encyclopedia was made by Rick Gates in 1993, and the concept of a free-as-in-freedom online encyclopedia was proposed by Richard Stallman in 1998.
MediaWiki is a free and open-source wiki software. It is used on Wikipedia and almost all other Wikimedia websites, including Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata; these sites define a large part of the requirement set for MediaWiki. It was developed for use on Wikipedia in 2002, and given the name "MediaWiki" in 2003. MediaWiki was originally developed by Magnus Manske and improved by Lee Daniel Crocker. Its development has since then been coordinated by the Wikimedia Foundation.
OCLC, Inc., doing business as OCLC, is an American nonprofit cooperative organization "that provides shared technology services, original research, and community programs for its membership and the library community at large". It was founded in 1967 as the Ohio College Library Center, then became the Online Computer Library Center as it expanded. In 2017, the name was formally changed to OCLC, Inc. OCLC and thousands of its member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat, the largest online public access catalog in the world. OCLC is funded mainly by the fees that libraries pay for the many different services it offers. OCLC also maintains the Dewey Decimal Classification system.
Hybrid library is a term used by librarians to describe libraries containing a mix of traditional print library resources and the growing number of electronic resources.
WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions, in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the OCLC member libraries collectively maintain WorldCat's database, the world's largest bibliographic database. The database includes other information sources in addition to member library collections. OCLC makes WorldCat itself available free to libraries, but the catalog is the foundation for other subscription OCLC services. WorldCat is used by librarians for cataloging and research and by the general public.
The Serbian Wikipedia is the Serbian-language version of the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Created on 16 February 2003, it reached its 100,000th article on 20 November 2009 before getting to another milestone with the 200,000th article on 6 July 2013, and then another milestone with the 500,000th article on 13 January 2018.
The reliability of Wikipedia concerns the validity, verifiability, and veracity of Wikipedia and its user-generated editing model, particularly its English-language edition. It is written and edited by volunteer editors who generate online content with the editorial oversight of other volunteer editors via community-generated policies and guidelines. This editing model is highly concentrated, as 77% of all articles are written by 1% of its editors, a majority of whom have chosen to remain anonymous. The reliability of the project has been tested statistically through comparative review, analysis of the historical patterns, and strengths and weaknesses inherent in its editing process. The online encyclopedia has been criticized for its factual reliability, principally regarding its content, presentation, and editorial processes. Studies and surveys attempting to gauge the reliability of Wikipedia have mixed results. Wikipedia's reliability was frequently criticized in the 2000s but has been improved; it has been generally praised in the late 2010s and early 2020s.
Zotero is a free and open-source reference management software to manage bibliographic data and related research materials, such as PDF files. Features include web browser integration, online syncing, generation of in-text citations, footnotes, and bibliographies, an integrated PDF reader and note editor, as well as integration with the word processors Microsoft Word, LibreOffice Writer, and Google Docs. It was originally created at the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University and, as of 2021, is developed by the non-profit Corporation for Digital Scholarship.
The following tables compare notable reference management software. The comparison includes older applications that may no longer be supported, as well as actively-maintained software.
The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), a division of the American Library Association, is a professional association of academic librarians and other interested individuals. It is dedicated to enhancing the ability of academic library and information professionals to serve the information needs of the higher education community and to improving learning, teaching, and research. The association serves librarians in all types of academic libraries at the community college, college, and university level and also serves librarians that work in comprehensive and specialized research libraries.
The Spanish Wikipedia is a Spanish-language edition of Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia. It has 1,866,891 articles. Started in May 2001, it reached 100,000 articles on March 8, 2006, and 1,000,000 articles on May 16, 2013. It is the 8th-largest Wikipedia as measured by the number of articles and has the 4th-most edits. It also ranks 12th in terms of depth among Wikipedias.
Wikimedia Commons is a media repository of free-to-use images, sounds, videos and other media. It is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation.
A hashtag is a metadata tag that is prefaced by the hash symbol, #. On social media, hashtags are used on microblogging and photo-sharing services such as Twitter or Tumblr as a form of user-generated tagging that enables cross-referencing of content by topic or theme. For example, a search within Instagram for the hashtag #bluesky returns all posts that have been tagged with that term. After the initial hash symbol, a hashtag may include letters, numerals, or underscores.
The Virtual International Authority File (VIAF) is an international authority file. It is a joint project of several national libraries and operated by the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC).
A distance education librarian or distance learning librarian is a specialized academic librarian whose primary duties involve serving the information needs of distance education students, faculty, and staff. This position typically involves coordinating the duties of many librarians and library staff to ensure adequate access to library resources for those who enroll in and teach distance education courses.
The Odia Wikipedia is the Odia edition of Wikipedia. It is a free, web-based, collaborative encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. The project was started by Suneet Samaetha in June 2002 and reached 1,000 articles in May 2011. This is one of the first four Indic Wikipedias started in 2002, among over 20 Indic language Wikipedias. The first edit on Odia Wikipedia occurred on 3 June 2002.
The Volapük Wikipedia is the Volapük-language edition of the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia. It was created in February 2003, but launched in January 2004. As of 3 June 2023, it is the 108th-largest Wikipedia as measured by the number of articles, with about 34,000 articles, and the second-largest Wikipedia in a constructed language after the Esperanto Wikipedia.
VisualEditor (VE) is an online rich-text editor for MediaWiki-powered wikis that provides a direct visual way to edit pages based on the "what you see is what you get" principle. It was developed by the Wikimedia Foundation in partnership with Fandom. In July 2013, it was enabled by default on several of the largest Wikipedia projects.
Art and Feminism is an annual worldwide edit-a-thon to add content to Wikipedia about women artists, which started in 2014. The project has been described as "a massive multinational effort to correct a persistent bias in Wikipedia, which is disproportionately written by and about men".
Wiki Loves Pride is a campaign to improve LGBT-related content on Wikipedia and other projects in the Wikimedia movement.
