Digital doorway: gaining library users through Wikipedia

ALIA National 2014 Conference, 15-19 September 2014 Melbourne : together we are stronger

This conference paper describes a project which was implemented as the result of students increasing expections that all the information they need for their assessment tasks can be found easily using commonly available search engines such as Google or Bing, and that library resources should be as easy to access as freely available sources such as Wikipedia. Convenience is a criterion which is used by students to decide if they will use a particular information source, so it is important for libraries to make their scholarly resources as easy to access as possible.

By providing a simple link from Wikipedia articles to library resources, this project has helped to place library resources within the research workflow of students, and satisfied their expectation of simple access to information resources. It has also allowed them to explore a greater diversity of published resources.