Wikipedia and museums: a possible partnership?

Abstract

Wikipedia is today considered one of the main tertiary sources of
information of the present time, having great impact in the diffusion of
contents related to all the areas of human knowledge. Another important
aspect of Wikipedia is how it is managed: by an active community of
volunteer editors, who build tools, rules, and collaborate to improve
or create articles. In this sense, many museums have sought to work
with Wikipedia and its sister projects as part of a digital strategy to
disseminate the knowledge they produce. The possibilities derived
from such a connection between cultural institutions and Wikipedia are
numerous, from the creative reuse of images and other digital contents
related to the collections, to the production of new data, with the support
of the editors of the encyclopedia, on the collections. It is, therefore,
an open, collaborative and innovative way of creating new contexts
for cultural heritage. Therefore, it is worth discussing the impact that
partnerships between museums and Wikipedia can have on the way
that museums participate in the cycle of knowledge production. This is
one of the objectives of this article.