Helping @Wikipedia readers find their read, one author, one publication at a time

Reading is what the public of Wikipedia does and in a way, every Wikipedia is an invitation to further reading. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and by definition, its coverage of a subject is limited. Its reliability is defined by its sources and they themselves are typically a subset of what may be read about that subject.

The quality of the invitation for further reading differs. How do we invite people to read a Shakespeare in Dutch, German, Malayalam, Kannada even English?

The primary partner in this quest for further reading; the local library. We can put all of them on a map and invite people to go there or to probe its website for further reading. Having them all in Wikidata with their coordinates puts libraries and what they stand for on the map. We can invite them to use services like OpenLibrary or WordCat, the bottom line; people read.

In this people first approach, the user interface is in the language people want to read their book in. It follows that the screen may be sparse. When it is to be a success, it is run like a business. We have statistics on libraries, people seeking, books found and a perspective in time. It is about people reading books not about transliterating books. Our business model: people reading. Funding is by people, organisations who care about more reading by more people. The numbers entice people to volunteer their efforts making more books, publications available in the language they care about.

To make this happen, the WMF takes the lead enabling and maintaining such a system and partnering with any and all organisations that care about this, organisations like the OCLC and the Internet Archive.

We will succeed when we make the effort.
Thanks,
       GerardM