Don’t overlook the obvious. How to help researchers find your collections.

Reams of websites and consultants offer search engine optimization (SEO) advice and services, to help people find your content and information.  However we’ve noticed that many of our clients are missing an obvious, no cost source of referral links that would help researchers find their sites.  Have you Googled your organization or the major subjects or people that are included in your collections?  Odds on Wikipedia will often be the first source listed in Google search results for people or place names. It therefore makes sense to make sure that your content and collections are findable through Wikipedia.    Don’t neglect this opportunity to promote your material to researchers who may be unaware of your existence, and to contribute back to the Wikipedia community.

As outlined below, Wikipedia is strictly non-commercial so we cannot add content for you.

“Wikipedia is a multilingual, web-based, free-content encyclopedia project supported by the Wikimedia Foundation and based on a model of openly editable content. Wikipedia is written collaboratively by largely anonymous volunteers who write without pay. Anyone with Internet access can write and make changes to Wikipedia articles, except in limited cases where editing is restricted to prevent disruption or vandalism. Users can contribute anonymously, under a pseudonym, or, if they choose to, with their real identity.”

We recommend you read the Guide to Contributing first before you get started.

• Determine if there are any links from Wikipedia to your website. Go to https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:LinkSearch&target= and enter the URL of your site.
• Check to see if your parent organization has a page. Maybe a link to your site or more information on the scope of your collection on their page would be adequate, and they can be asked to add this link for you.
• Consider adding a link on existing Wikipedia entries for significant people, organizations or places that are well represented in your collection, and are therefore a useful source of information for researchers. If your collections management system offers permalinks, you can add the URL to a fonds level descriptive record or finding aid under either the External links or References section. This requires only minimal knowledge of the formatting in the wiki markup language.
• Add a new page if nothing exists on a person or topic already.  You will need to check first that it meets the Wikipedia tests for notability, i.e. how the editors decide whether a given topic warrants its own article, and follow the content protocols and editing guidelines

To add more detailed content, check out the Wikipedia tutorial or watch their YouTube videos. There is also a useful video from the Archives Association of Ontario created specifically as an overview of the ways in which archivists can use Wikipedia to link to their online resources.  The page List of Archives in Canada shows how many of these archives do not yet have a specific entry. Check out the page for the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives for a good example to look at for possible content ideas.

Please contact us if you would like help with more general tips to help users find your content.