The Wikipedia Library-The largest encyclopedia needs a digital library and we are building it/Conclusion
Conclusion
"The only thing that you absolutely
have to know, is the location of the library."
— Albert Einstein
It's said that "discovery happens elsewhere."19 Less often said is that elsewhere is increasingly Wikipedia. As a top-5 website, Wikipedia is the sixth highest referrer to all DOIs online. With this position, The Wikipedia Library tackles the biggest challenges facing information professionals today: discovery, access, literacy, and participation.
Wikipedia’s wealth of eyeballs means that it is an unparalleled opportunity for exposure and dissemination of content. Our goal is to make Wikipedia not an end point for research, but a starting point for deeper learning and research literacy—where Wikipedia leads its 500 million monthly readers back to information professionals, scholarly resources, and full texts. For our editors, that means access to world-class library and reference services comparable to a leading university library. For our readers, who often do not have access to journals or databases, Wikipedia has become a ubiquitous gateway: not all information is free, but most information
can at least be summarized and cited on Wikipedia—and we are working to make every citation lead somewhere full text can be obtained. With libraries and publishers, that means having their resources found and used through contribution and content production—as participants, as experts, as builders in an "intellectual makerspace", and as natural allies in the common humanitarian mission to share knowledge with the world and all of its people.20