Talk:The Wikipedia Library

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Question, comments, suggestion, concern, or discussion about the library? Place it here.

Ancestry.com subscription = "Registered guest"

When creating biographies, I've been gratefully using my access to Ancestry.com, which shows on my Wikipedia Library account as valid through August 18, 2022. Unfortunately, today I was unable to access any Australian sources because I am apparently consigned to "Registered guest" status now. I tried chatting with a bot that returned repeatedly to the only option it could suggest: "Do you want to cancel this account?" and then it asked me to use different words. It was an endless do-loop. I also sent an email to Ancestry's Support desk, but so far only received a confirmation that I'm in a queue and "and a Customer Solutions Associate will respond shortly." I'm wondering if my recent subscription extension through Wikipedia Library was somehow lost by that dratted bot? Feeling a tad grumpy, Grand'mere Eugene (talk) 03:23, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

@Grand'mere Eugene: Our Ancestry accounts should last a year, but they maybe last a year from when they're created rather than when you receive them, which might make that date incorrect. We've been trying to get additional accounts to distribute so that this issue can be resolved for yourself and other editors who are waiting for new/renewed accounts. In the meantime the best next step is for you to click 'Extend' (or 'Renew') for Ancestry in The Wikipedia Library so that we know you need a new account. Hopefully it won't be too long until we have those. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 11:53, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

May not be the most helpful but you can access Ancestry for free from a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Family History Center: https://www.familysearch.org/centers/locations/ Banaticus (talk) 00:44, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

Search via DOI and access inconsistency

Two searches using DOI on articles on Taylor&FrancisOnline one works the other does not?? E.g. Search entering the full doi url https://doi.org/10.1080/00913367.2022.2049932 works and goes to the Taylor&FrancisOnline page

However Search entering the full doi url https://doi.org/10.1080/10934529.2015.1128719 does not come back with the relevant article Environmental analysis of the life cycle emissions of 2-methyl tetrahydrofuran solvent manufactured from renewable resources

If this title is then put into the https://wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org/users/my_library/ it does not come back with the article.

It also does not work on the basic https://eds.s.ebscohost.com

However, it does work on the advanced https://eds.s.ebscohost.com search, when entered as the article title. Just click on advanced search.

You can then see a summary of the article but if you try to access the full text you get the following error.

https://wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/login?auth=production&url=http://www.tandfonline.com/openurl?genre=article&issn=1093-4529&volume=51&issue=6&spage=487

Text We are sorry, but your account does not have access to this resource. If you think you have reached this screen in error or have questions about the resource you were trying to reach, please contact your library.RonaldDuncan (talk) 13:16, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

File missing: docs/suspend.htm

When trying to access collections (de Gruyter, JSTOR, ...), I now get this message instead of an access.

I am pretty sure I'm being blocked. And there is a reason, but not a malicious one: For research on articles on East Low German dialects in the German Wikipedia that I am currently creating/revising [1,2,3,4] I downloaded Tessilo's Mecklenburgian Dictionary for offline consultation from de Gruyter -- and this is some 30+ full books. I guess that fell under "mass scrape or mass download partner content" and I hit some limit or quota there and am blacklisted, now. Two questions: Can I get unblocked? If there is a quota or limit of books to retrieve, what is this limit (to make sure I don't hit it unintentionally again)?

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordmärkisch, extended

[2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mittelm%C3%A4rkisch, new

[3] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A4rkische_Dialekte, extended

[4] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomerano, extended

Thanks a lot, Chiarcos (talk) 01:13, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Chiarcos: - you're correct, and apologies for the unhelpful error message. The limit is 2GB in 60 minutes. That might be a bit low - we've had a few other users hit this limit. I'll see what we can do to increase it. There should be a more helpful error message (Phab:T305956) but I guess that's not actually working. I've unblocked you :) Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 11:51, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! Chiarcos (talk) 14:28, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

Rock's Back Pages access

According to my library homepage, I have access to Rock's Back Pages. But when I go to the RBP site, I cannot view any articles. Viennese Waltz (talk) 10:52, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

Unfortunately RBP is not currently available - it should be hidden for the moment. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:18, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

No worries, thanks for letting me know. --Viennese Waltz (talk) 07:37, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

It seems to be available again, so maybe someone should remove the "Not Available" flag that I currently see. --Viennese Waltz (talk) 08:07, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

User Q&A issues and proposal

Hi, User:Samwalton9 (WMF), TL;DR: I have a question about who's watching this page and how to get users timely responses to their questions about the Wikipedia library, and whether this is even the right place for them, and a related follow-up proposal with some ideas about how to improve the situation while simultaneously reducing the burden on WMF. I apologize for the ping (and for the long message), but you'll see why in a minute.

This all started with the section above by User:Viennese Waltz, who subsequently posted this question^{[ perma ]} at en-wiki Help Desk when they didn't get a response here. While I perhaps would've waited longer, especially considering they posted here on a Sunday, I'm sympathetic to their question at HD about the proper method of posting questions about TWL. User:Michael D. Turnbull, responding at HD, suggested the "Contact us" link at the wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org page, but that lacks transparency in the sense that nobody else can see the question or the response, and so it may just generate the same questions over and over. This is a wiki, and it seems to me that "Contact us" links should be reserved for private matters, like stuff for T&S, messages to admins for issues like outing or redvdelling that need to remain private, but not answers to general questions about using a project like TWL.

So, now we get around to my question and comment: I get the feeling TWL doesn't have dedicated, permanent staff other than whoever at WMF has the project on their plate at the moment, and in particular, that since 2019 you're the only one monitoring this page on a regular basis. Am I right so far? If that's the case, I understand, and am not complaining about something I can't fix (maybe I'll make a donation in the next drive!) and really appreciate what you do. But I do have a proposal: can we get some kind of on-call or rotation set up, with a bunch of people monitoring this page (or an alternative venue), whether from WMF or just volunteers, so that user questions can get triaged more rapidly, maybe some of them even answered, otherwise kicked upstairs to you or other TWL experts for the more technical stuff? I think there are a ton of people who love TWL (like yours truly) who would be more than happy to be put on a list of volunteers, possibly along with a frequency or calendar parameter of when or how often they'd be willing to monitor and triage questions here (see the sign-up page for the en-wiki Wikipedia:Feedback request service for an example). I'd even go through a training to up my ability to respond, if you have one or could devise one, sort of like the way they do it at New Pages Patrol (or their NPP School), or at AFC.

The other thought or proposal, is to up the style and appearance of the response venue by switching it to a noticeboard or Help desk for the public-facing Q&A stuff, retaining this Talk page more for in-house technical stuff. I'm not that familiar with AFC, but it's an all-volunteer project at en-wiki (see participants) that handles user Q&A mostly at Draft talk pages I believe, but also at the AFC Help desk; perhaps User:Theroadislong can correct me or expand on usage there. NPP trainers Rosguill or Atsme might have thoughts about how their experience with the framework for new pages review might be similar or different than dealing with TWL Q&A.

If I was not too far off in my assumptions about staffing of TWL, then it reminds me somewhat of the situation at another WMF-related project, namely the Wikipedia:Education program (wikiedu.org; dashboard). This is another project I love, and which happens to be understaffed (even before some cutbacks a while ago) and which I pop in and out of on an irregular basis in order to try to help out with student questions when I can. Edu users @Ian (Wiki Ed), LiAnna (Wiki Ed), and Sage (Wiki Ed): may have some thoughts about their experiences with responding to student user issues. I think their Education noticeboard is a great way to deal with technical questions about Wiki edu. However, their situation is not completely analogous to TWL, as the great majority of questions about Wiki edu come from students via the Wiki edu portal and are directed to the Talk page of the individual Wiki Edu Context expert associated with a given class and not to the noticeboard, which is more for in-house stuff among staff and interested volunteers. I would think that for TWL it should probably be the reverse, with a common noticeboard or Help desk being the first stop for all users asking questions, sort of like the AFC Help desk, including TWL newbies, and that this Talk page would be devoted more to in-house stuff; but that's just my initial view of things without knowing what's under the hood at TWL.

Thanks, Sam; I'm a big fan of TWL, and I realize this is a long post, but hopefully if something comes of this, it will eventually ease your burden, not add to it, and help users at the same time. Adding @Ben Creasy and ReaderofthePack:. Mathglot (talk) 20:40, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

• +1 Hi, Sam! Mathglot, TWL worked much differently back when I was a volunteer approving access. It is nothing at all like we do at NPP. Based on my experiences with the new system, it appears we have more resources but they come with a limited number of free access and are only good for 1 year, depending on the source/journal. In my situation, there is no library on this small island; therefore, I am totally dependent on Google search, and online resources via my TWL card, and however else I can get access, which slows the wheels of progress considerably when working NPP & AfC. While the new card system has given us more access to resources (kudos to Jake, you, Nikki & the team!!), it made it a bit more difficult for me (as an AfC/NPP reviewer & volunteer teacher/mentor at NPPSCHOOL) to get access to those sources, and because there appears to be a limited amount of editors per source TWL is allowed to provide, I'm on a waiting list for who knows how long. I even sent my renewal in before my present time expired and was still pushed out of the game. I was hoping AfC + NPP reviewers (and other project teams who do fact-checking & verification work) could be considered for first-priority access since we're the first line of defense in keeping garbage/spam/hoaxes out of the encyclopedia. It's much needed, especially by those of us who have no university library access, or any semblance of a library at all. Atsme^📞📧 21:14, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

  Thanks for your thoughts Atsme. Just a quick clarification on how the library is now working - there's both more content and it's more seamless! The majority of library content now doesn't require you to wait for access. After you've logged in you should find a 'My Collections' tab which contains dozens of publishers' content just one click away ("Access collection"). Most of these are provided by default to all eligible users and don't require any applications or renewals. There are then another set of resources which do unfortunately still require applications. We've been moving a surprising number across to the automatic-access model in recent months thanks to the work of Vipin. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 13:07, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

@Mathglot: Thanks for sharing your thoughts and writing up such a comprehensive explanation of the problem and its potential solutions! I completely agree that we could be doing more to encourage community-centred questions and answers, rather than these venues relying primarily on WMF staff to respond.

To start with a little context, you're largely correct about the current situation. My team doesn't have anyone whose primary role is to read/monitor these kinds of questions and discussions so sometimes they can go missed for longer than would be ideal. It tends to be myself or Nikkimaria who keep an eye on these pages and answer emails. You're totally right, though, that this isn't a great long-term solution. If I moved on from working at the WMF we might risk being in a place where this responsibility doesn't get moved to someone else (not that I'm planning to go anywhere in the short term!), and so I agree it would be great to set up a mechanism where community conversation and support can take place.

In terms of the practicalities, then, my feeling is that this talk page isn't a good venue because active editors tend not to be watching Meta pages - English Wikipedia editors are going to prefer to read and respond to questions on English Wikipedia, for example. The English Wikipedia TWL talk page and German Wikipedia equivalent have much more community discussion and responses than this page. One idea I had (T299510) was to contextually link to local project pages in the user's preferred language, so that they could feel more confident in posting and receiving responses in their own language. That comes with the downside that it's harder for us at WMF to monitor and respond to those discussions, but is probably a net positive. How does that sound to you?

I don't know how much benefit we would get from formalising the process of being someone who answers questions at this venue, but would it help folks like yourself if we wrote some kind of guide to how the library works and answers to common questions? Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 13:37, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

@Samwalton9 (WMF): thanks for your comments. I agree that there doesn't necessarily have to be formalisation, it could follow more the model of en-wiki Help desk or Tea house, where any experienced user volunteer/watcher who feels like responding, responds. That said, TWL is a bit more technical, with more under the hood that might need explanation to volunteers who wished to be able to respond to users at more than a very elementary level.

So, in that light, yes, absolutely a guide like you mention would be helpful. In fact, it might be helpful to have documents at two levels: one more geared to TWL users, perhaps a FAQ to supplement what's out there already, and secondly a document to train volunteers at a higher level so we could respond to and answer a good percentage of new user questions. NPP is probably the gold standard (afaik) with both a tutorial and a training program; Atsme, Kudpung, Barkeep49 and others are good contacts about those pages.

Lastly, about venue: I agree that meta isn't the best location; maybe there could be a brief "Help page" here, with just a paragraph or two of intro, and pointers to the appropriate English and German pages, just for those who might search here first, to give them the appropriate links. Mathglot (talk) 01:38, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

P.S., please link the German TWL page for me. Mathglot (talk) 01:54, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

@Mathglot and Samwalton9: I'm only responding because I was pinged. I'm perfectly trilingual English-French-German, but as I am English I only contribute to the en.Wiki. I have only created about 100 articles so I have never felt any need to use the Library and I don't know how it works. I do believe that the local Wikis are the best places to ask for any help on their processes which, BTW, may be quite different from each other. However, I wrote most of the tutorial at Wikipedia:New pages patrol and I created the Wikipedia:New pages patrol/School and the New Page Patroller user right, so if you have any questions on any of those, don't hesitate to drop me a line on my en.Wiki talk page. I reply to pings and messages very promptly. Kudpung (talk) 03:04, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

@Mathglot: That all sounds great. I'll see if we can prioritise that library ticket in the coming weeks and in the meantime will chat with the team about help/FAQ pages. The de.wiki venue is at Wikipedia Diskussion:Förderung/The Wikipedia Library. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 10:24, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

FYI: Poor search results at CEEOL

This amount to a bug report on Central and Eastern European Online Library (CEEOL)'s search relevance algorithm and really ought to be filed as a ticket there so they could address it. So wrt to WMF/TWL, it's more just a heads-up for you about poor search results at CEEOL. In particular, it is not a request for investigation or action on the part of WMF, other than to be aware of the situation, and wherever you maintain your internal dossiers on individual partners, please add a pointer to this report to the CEEOL dossier for future reference. Perhaps if WMF has access to CEEOL's Bugzilla-equivalent, you could raise a ticket there; other than that, I don't see anything actionable here. So, with that said, here's what I'm seeing:

The summary page of search results delivered by CEEOL's search relevance algorithm seems badly broken. I tried various queries, which return a search result summary page which either contain no results (not shown in examples below), or nonsensical, irrelevant results (see examples). Queries for "Krackow" and "Brno" got no relevant results, and a query for "Poland" turned up documents with peripheral occurrences of the word, but having little to do with the topic. It's almost as if they're returning results from their index in numerical sequence, skipping the relevance sorting step. Some examples queries, showing the top three results on the search result summary page delivered by CEEOL for each one:

• Poland (results restricted to English) – 60,891 results in English
  1. "10 weeks" in the GDR – result #1 (pdf); 2 hits in the CEEOL metadata attached to the document; no occurrences in the 11-page document
  2. "16+1" Format – Role in Geopolitical Strategy Of PRC – result #2 (pdf); 13 hits of 'Poland' in this article about relations of China with EE, mostly in series with names of other countries in a list
  3. "A Bridge Too Far" -Examining a Possible Outcome of the Ukraine Crisis – result #3 (pdf); 5 hits, in statistics about Poland mixed in with stats from other EE countries
• Krackow  – 5 total results (nothing obviously relevant in the search result page)
  1. Geografia wybranych doświadczeń krajoznawczych motocyklistów... [Geography of selected motorcyclists' sightseeing experiences] – Result #1 (pdf); one occurrence of 'Krackow', in row 22 of the table on p. 296
  2. Here Come the Neo Nazis – Result #2 (pdf); one hit in paragraph 1 p. 24; passing mention with three other cities in series
  3. Personality, Cognition and Life Events as Predictors of Emotional Distress in Adolescence – Result #3 (pdf); search highlights p. 2 (of 15), but I don't see a hit there
• Brno (nothing obviously relevant)
  1. „Protistátní činnost“ v kostce. Příprava kartotéky Akce 48 k badatelskému využití ["Anti-state activity" in a nutshell. Preparation of the Action 48 card catalogue for research use] – Pdf for result #1; footnote 8 on page 55 contains 'Brno'
  2. Book Symposium – Result #2 (pdf); does not contain 'Brno'
  3. Ethnicity reflected in the Rules of Law and Official Documents of Medieval Hungary – Result #3 (pdf);foonote 3 on page 41 has it.

That's as far as I went with it. I certainly won't be using this partner further, unless they revise their relevance algorithm. File it away and forget it, or perhaps file a ticket at CEEOL to help them out, if that's an option. (Reply not required.) Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 22:39, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

@Mathglot Their search is weird, but the service still gives access to stuff. I just use their regular search, then copy the url into the WL-access page. Let me know if you need more on how-to-do it (give me a paper you can't access and I'll show you how I got it). Piotrus (talk) 10:49, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

Better navigation to partner search links at en-wiki

A discussion is taking place at en-wiki, about providing better access to partner direct search links, by implementing an intelligent nav box with links that go straight to the partner search page (or even to the partner's search result page, under parametric control). Please see en:Template talk:TWLJ#Reimagine as direct access nav box. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 22:48, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

Books & Bytes - feedback

We wanted to take the opportunity to collect feedback about this newsletter. It has long aimed to provide a summary of news related to The Wikipedia Library (the resources available to editors at https://wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org/) and the intersection of Wikimedia and libraries, including the 1Lib1Ref campaign. We want to evaluate whether one newsletter for all this information still makes sense, and whether there are any changes we should make moving forward. Some prompts:

• What topics do you like to see covered? What should be added or left out?
• How often should the newsletter come out?
• What else should change about Books & Bytes?

Looking forward to reading your thoughts! Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 16:50, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

I would like for Books & Bytes to highlight various collections in each issue. I'd love to hear about the types of content that other editors find a specific collection to be most helpful finding. Schazjmd (talk) 17:01, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

I agree with the above. I would like B&B to highlight databases, and what the focus on that database is (Canadian journals, biology and medicine, Eastern European arts and culture, etc.) Hopefully, this will bring to my attention databases I could use in my research, especially databases that are not utilized as often. Z1720 (talk) 17:48, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

• Keep it short! Something to be said for resisting scope creep: longevity! Thanks for keeping it going. czar 21:57, 1 August 2022 (UTC)
• @Samwalton9 (WMF) Big problem that needs more attention: Wikipedia Library is often not translated to other Wikipedias, or unfinished. Polish Wikipedia interwiki, for example, hasn't been updated for years and doesn't link to the current generation very useful tool. WMF needs to kick some affiliates so they actually notice this. Piotrus (talk) 13:00, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
• Had another thought: When introducing new databases, it would be very useful to describe its coverage for those unfamiliar with the product. It would be a bonus to also describe some ways in which Wikipedians currently use it or how we could use it, which would help adoption. czar 15:32, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
• Seconding idea of reviewing what kind of resources are available in a particular collection, new or old. It would also be useful to have tips and tricks on how to search (it's not obvious that you get different hits if you search directly in Proquest, for example, and at least some of the providers only give hits if the search term is in the title). Another topic of interest would be library uptake stats -- eg how has the rollout to users with 500+ edits affected library use? I'd be happy to read the newsletter more often, if there was anything to include. Espresso Addict (talk) 00:49, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
• Support. I like the newsletter,and think library is brilliant.But I am certain I am not using it to its full potential. So maybe hint of the week? OR people just talk about their favourite database, and what annoys them the most, and how to get around it. Personally, I don't know how to select a quote from Google books (copy is not possible (do you use and OCR extension??), and have no idea how to pick up the chapter title and name.
• I think also have the signpost include a link to the newsletter, with the [Wikipedia:WikiProject_Resource_Exchange/Resource_Request]. Just as an aside, user_talk:Megalibrarygirl would that help you as well ?
• I'd like the newsletter to be less garish on my talk page. There's no need for a banner graphic, a box, or a stock photo, for instance. Compare with "Tech News" or The Signpost. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:24, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

  Is there a way to send a newsletter that is unexpanded? or a switch for talk to have an old 'skool' text only? (I like the pictures, but I understand the preference) Wakelamp (talk) 01:28, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Time limit for limited accounts?

The EULA when I signed up said, "We ask that you do not request access to any publishers with a limited number of available accounts whose resources you can already access for free through your local library or university, or another institution or organization, in order to provide that opportunity to others." Would it be possible to request a term or time-limited account? If I went off on an extended wikibreak, I wouldn't want to deprive others of the chance to get ahold of my account. Perhaps simply say that anyone gone for, say, 2+ years or so would lose access to those publishers who only provide a limited number of accounts? Banaticus (talk) 00:49, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

@Banaticus: This is the case for most accesses and there are two mechanisms which help with this. For any proxy-based access you can request a specific length of time to have access, from 1 month to 12 months. This automatically frees up spaces as your account expires. You can also manually return your access for these collections, to proactively free up space. For other accesses, e.g. Newspapers.com, where the publisher needs to do some setup and we don't have control over the access it's harder for us to do something like this. However, those accounts usually only last a year, or we semi-regularly prune accounts by asking users if they want to continue having access. So I wouldn't worry too much about that line - if an account is useful to you now, go for it, and we'll free up space over time, either automatically or manually :) Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 10:41, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

Good to know, Samwalton9. Thanks. Banaticus (talk) 17:01, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

Registering for the Wiley Online Library & Science Direct

I can use other parts of the library, but although I've tried in 2 different browsers, I can't get registered for the Wiley collection. It just always returns a message that the Captcha failed. I wanted to bother Wiley about it, not you guys, but you can't access Wiley support if you can't login, so that's Catch22. Fingers crossed there's a way around this. Thank you! Hildabast (talk) 07:54, 20 August 2022 (UTC) I just realized that I probably have to submit an application here first. So I'll try that. Sorry! Hildabast (talk) 07:59, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

Cabbell's International

I am able to access all other databases (so I _must_ perforce be logged in, I guess), but this is what Cabbells says:

«CABBELLS Your account doesn't have any active subscriptions No journals matched your search criteria»

And it displays a blank page. Just a heads up! XavierItzm (talk) 21:07, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

This looks to be an issue for all users. We've contacted Cabell's to get this resolved :) Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 10:03, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

Oxford Academic

How far should it take for us to get access to Oxford? ─ The Aafī ^(talk) 06:02, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

We've got in contact with them to resolve this issue but haven't heard back yet. Hopefully not too long! Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 10:04, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

Fingers crossed! I can't wait to get back on Grove Music. Nullibiquite (talk) 04:31, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

Error still persists, "This account has no valid subscription for this site.". --Seryo93 (talk) 07:43, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Any update on this? Oxford was one of the most useful resources by far, but still seems to be inaccessible. Espresso Addict (talk) 04:16, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, opened Oxford Research Encyclopedias, and yet, it's entries have a red lock icon (that is, locked), and when you click "Sign in to an additional subscriber account" button (right under "Signed as the Wikimedia Library"), you'll notice that, "This account [i.e. Wikimedia Library] has no valid subscription for this site". Same thing occurs with, e.g. Oxford Handbooks: when you attempt to view one of the chapters, "You do not currently have access to this chapter" kicks in, despite the "Signed in as Institutional accounts The Wikipedia Library Wikipedia Library" status. And others of their sites too (MPEPIL, for example used to be avaliable via Oxford University Press Law, which is covered by WM Library, but now "This account [i.e. Wikimedia Library] has no valid subscription for this site" as well). Seryo93 (talk) 13:01, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

It's working! Thank you very, very much! --Seryo93 (talk) 15:13, 16 September 2022 (UTC) UPD: not quite, yet (ouplaw "still has Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content. Please, subscribe or login to access all content." mark, whilst Oxford Research Encyclopedias works; Oxford Academic (that is https://academic.oup.com/) doesn't work, "You do not currently have access to this article/chapter" pops up everywhere, despite "Signed in as Institutional accounts The Wikipedia Library Wikipedia Library"), but still thanks for ongoing effort to sort this out. Bests, --Seryo93 (talk) 15:18, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_BAD_CONFIG

I get this error when trying to visit the library page through my network but not when using cellular data. I guess there is a range block on some IPs affecting me as well?-- Texniths (talk) 13:37, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

@Texniths that error is generally not related to IP blocks on our servers, but something wrong in between. Restarting your router may help; if you are using a proxy it may be out of date - so try not using a proxy. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:33, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

Thank you

A number of sources that previously required applications, such as Springer Link, Taylor & Francis, and Nature are now included in the standard library collection. A huge thank you to all involved that made this happen. 0xDeadbeef (talk) 13:35, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Taylor and Francis

Although the site says that it is available as part of the bundle, I cannot access doi:10.1080/1369118X.2011.641991. Any help would be appreciated. 0xDeadbeef (talk) 16:57, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

0xDeadbeef, the Wikipedia Library only subscribes to some of Taylor & Francis's collections, and it looks like that article isn't covered. I suggest making a request at en:WP:REREQ, where someone who does have access will probably be able to send you a copy. Cheers, Extraordinary Writ (talk) 00:09, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. 0xDeadbeef (talk) 13:57, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Baylor University Press

It doesn't appear there is a way to access the Baylor University Press resources after having been approved. The description under Available Collections says "Editors can select titles of interest from their catalogue", which goes to a 404 page. Flod logic (talk) 09:07, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

@Flod logic Thanks for the heads up! We've updated this link to the correct one. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 10:29, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Idea Lab : Ask Top Sources for Share Cite Option

Not sure if there are any issues with TWL sites, but am crossposting in case Wikipedia:Village_pump_ Wakelamp (talk) 07:42, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

@Wakelamp This is an interesting idea and one we've considered in the past. Unfortunately the ways we cite material on Wikimedia projects are just far too varied for this to be feasible. Citation styles and templates aren't just different from one Wikimedia project to the next, but even in one article to the next within one project. Add onto that complexities around all the languages we support and the fact that our templates might change, and this just ends up not really being possible on the publishers' side. The best bet, in my view, is to continue using tools like Citoid which can generate the citations on our end. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 10:28, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

No idea what "top sources" means here, but if you're looking for journal-level metrics, beware they usually select for the worst. Nemo 11:40, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

Cannot access most of Grove Music Online

I appreciate the subscription to Grove Music Online through Oxford Press, but when I search there, most articles have a lock symbol and are inaccessible. When I try to register, I am asked for $30 per month for access. The landing page does say that I have access through Wikipedia Library, but this access does not seem to work. David spector (talk) 15:02, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Most of Oxford has been offline all month; see thread above and on the English Wikipedia talk page for the WL. I pray daily for its restoration, but so far no luck. Espresso Addict (talk) 03:32, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Seems that TWL access to OUP resources has expired, but hopefully that will be soon reinstated. --Pafsanias (talk) 13:10, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Cannot access "Electronic Enlightenment" and others

A number of these Wikipedia Library links simply do not login to the resource. For example, Electronic Enlightenment takes me to the proper website, but requires Login rather than logging me in automatically. When I provide my Wikipedia credentials, it fails to recognize me as a registered user. David spector (talk) 17:05, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

@David spector Unfortunately our access to Oxford resources expired and we're struggling to get a response from them to reinstate it. We'll keep trying and let you know when we've been able to get these accesses working again. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 10:27, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Oxford University Press and access issues

@David spector @Espresso Addict @TheAafi @Nullibiquite @Seryo93 @Fehufanga @Olivaw-Daneel @Mike Christie @Unexpectedlydian

Hi all. Apologies for the continued issues in accessing Oxford University Press resources via the library. We had an unfortunate combination of staff absences on both sides which led to this taking longer than usual to resolve. OUP are now looking into this and have restored access to some collections. We're hoping the others will follow before long. I've tracked progress on this issue at T320236. Crossed-out items appear to be working as expected again. Please let me know if that doesn't seem to be the case.

I also wanted to let you know about a feature we just rolled out which should make this issues less confusing in the future. For collections which are having access issues we can now add notices with links to Phabricator tickets, where we'll provide updates on what we're doing to reinstate access. I've flagged the relevant outstanding Oxford University Press collections, so you should see notices next to those in your library. We'll do this for other collections which have issues in the future too as soon as we're aware of a problem. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 11:24, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

@Samwalton9 (WMF) Thanks for notifying us about this. I can still access GMO and Oxford Academic by directly visiting the wikipedialibrary URL. In addition, I can access the items there. Are the access buttons for these two going to remain disabled until everything is restored? --*Fehufangą ♮ ✉ Talk page ♮ 11:37, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

green lock does not always equal access apparently.--*Fehufangą ♮ ✉ Talk page ♮ 11:39, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Samwalton9 (WMF), thank you for keeping us updated. I have been able to access ODNB today. Unexpectedlydian (talk) 18:40, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Many thanks for this, Samwalton9 (WMF) -- I've managed to get into Grove Music successfully, but the top-level library button is now leading to the Phabricator ticket, which is a bit confusing? Cheers, Espresso Addict (talk) 18:56, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

@Espresso Addict Good catch - I inadvertently added the unavailable tag to Music Online when that's actually working now. I've removed the notice from that collection! Samwalton9 (talk) 10:08, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for accessing Grove Art Online again. But the Benezit Dictionary of Artists is still unavailable, are you aware of this problem? Joszek (talk) 10:54, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

@Samwalton9 (WMF) Could you explain why the Benezit Dictionary of Artists is still unavailable? Joszek (talk) 18:28, 9 November 2022 (UTC)

@Joszek Apologies for the delays on this. It looks like Grove Art access has been reinstated but Benezit has not. We just sent over another list of resources which aren't working as intended this week, so I'm hopeful this will be resolved before long. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 10:58, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

@Samwalton9 (WMF) Thank you for your response. I am patiently waiting for the good news. Joszek (talk) 12:34, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

@Samwalton9 (WMF), any updates on Academic? Has the foundation been able to get any response from OA? ─ The Aafī ^(talk) 08:09, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

@TheAafi Unfortunately we've been struggling to clarify what's happening here, I don't have any updates yet. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 13:31, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

Joszek, the Benezit Dictionary of Artists is available at the Internet Archive (partially funded by Wikimedia Italia), no need to look for it elsewhere. Nemo 11:37, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

@Nemo Thank you for this useful info. Appreciate this. Joszek (talk) 17:34, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

Cannot access American Psychological Association

I'm unfortunately having difficulties accessing APA's collection. When I access it, it directs me to the TWL version of APA PsycNet website but upon searching PsycArticles, the site tells me for some of the articles that I need to get access by purchasing the PDF or accessing it through an institution (there's also Get Access buttons alongside the inaccessible PsycArticles). Has anything happened with the collection, e.g. has Wikipedia's partnership with APA expired? Nothing turned up when I searched about this issue in the archives here in Meta. LightNightLights (talk) 07:03, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

@LightNightLights Thanks for the heads up! It looks like we last extended access to APA in October last year, so it seems like this lapsed. I've asked them to extend our access. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 10:44, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

Thank you very much! LightNightLights (talk) 12:22, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

@LightNightLights This is now renewed and working again :) Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 17:56, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

search function

If I do the search in [1], there is "We are unable to validate your login credentials. Please contact your institution for assistance." However, If I can do the search in https://eds-s-ebscohost-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/eds/search/basic?vid=4&sid=c321d17b-71ed-4a2b-b131-fd15da9b64be%40redis Kethyga (talk) 08:10, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

@Kethyga That's strange - it seems to work for me. Can you try again and let me know if you're still having an issue? Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 11:11, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for your time. I have solved the issue. As I use en:Zotero and set "Proxy Settings" in Zotero preferences, so it would redirect some EBSCOhost domains. Kethyga (talk) 03:19, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

Just checking

Do I recall correctly that, recently, the Basic Bundle included access to Newspapers.com ? I could have sworn it did, briefly.

I see it now includes access to Newspaperarchive.com, but that's different... I think. DS (talk) 02:19, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

@DragonflySixtyseven It doesn't yet but it will soon: T322916 :) Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 11:10, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Oh cool. (And the search box on NewspaperArchive autocompletes to one of my pet projects, so I guess that answers that.) DS (talk) 01:43, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

JSTOR and Youtube

The video tutorial for how to use JSTOR is private. Even if it's not generally available, it should at least be visible if one follows the link here.

(I've pretty much figured it out already, but I'd be interested to see if there's anything I haven't noticed yet.) DS (talk) 00:15, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

@DragonflySixtyseven Thanks for the heads up - I hadn't noticed. It was a JSTOR-published video, so I'll just remove the link for now and see if there's a suitable replacement. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 11:44, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

The University of Chicago Press

I am not able to access the full text of any article of the journals that I have tried, including Journal of Politics. Even though I can see "Access provided by Wikipedia Library" in the top right corner of my screen, I am asked to "Log in to access your subscription" in order to view the full text. Is this publisher restricting the list of journals available or is there a way to log in from this page? Thanks. Underwaterbuffalo (talk) 16:12, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

@Underwaterbuffalo Looks like our access might have expired - we'll get in contact, thanks for raising this! Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 13:43, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

@Underwaterbuffalo This is now renewed, so you should be able to access content again! Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 16:39, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

Access confirmed. Thanks! Underwaterbuffalo (talk) 17:01, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

Underwaterbuffalo, have you tried searching it through Internet Archive Scholar? About 30 % of the content is publicly archived, and usually that means you're more likely than not to find what you need. Nemo 11:33, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up! I didn't know about this new service of Internet Archive. I didn't need it since access through The Wikipedia Library was restored, but I will check it in the future. Underwaterbuffalo (talk) 11:38, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

Findmypast

I received an access code for Findmypast on January 8th, but the code isn’t working. Every time I enter it on the linked page [2], I get an error message. What can I do? Thanks --Jossi2 (talk) 22:23, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

@Jossi2 Sorry to hear that - we'll contact Findmypast and see if we can get to the bottom of this. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 09:30, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

@User:Jossi2, did you login first, before entering the code? I found that if you already have an account and login, then enter the code, it works. TrottieTrue (talk) 13:55, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

Thank you very much, that did the trick. --Jossi2 (talk) 23:11, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Ancestry issues

The new institution version of Ancestry accessible via TWL does not seem to work properly. After the first search results load, clicking through to the next page, or another filter, results in the page getting stuck loading. If you refresh, then it works, but otherwise, it doesn't load these pages properly. TrottieTrue (talk) 01:49, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

That's odd @TrottieTrue. I've filed T327653, hopefully we can look into this soon. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 13:51, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

Thanks @Samwalton9 (WMF) - yes, your screenshot is what keeps repeatedly flashing when loading more search results or trying to use a search filter. Hopefully it will be resolved soon. TrottieTrue (talk) 23:26, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

International Directory of Company Histories

Gale's International Directory of Company Histories series would be very useful for sourcing articles about businesses. It is listed as part of the Gale subscription for TWL, but only a single volume (150) appears to be available. Is it possible to contact Gale to see if this is an oversight or if all volumes should be available? Jfire (talk) 03:52, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Jfire, have you checked the International Directory of Company Histories volumes at the Internet Archive? Nemo 15:43, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Oh wow, no I had not. Thanks for pointing that out! Jfire (talk) 15:55, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Less access to De Gruyter

A few days ago, I was using De Gruyter and accessing several things such as The Annual Messages of the Presidents of Liberia 1848–2010 and the chapter Kiribati and Nauru in another book, but today I see these are no longer available to me. Now the availability is listed as "Requires Authentication", and there's a banner on top of the site about requiring institutional access. Has Wikimedia's deals with De Gruyter changed? Is this a permanent change in the content accessible from De Gruyter or is this a temporary glitch? RoundSquare (talk) 22:54, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Both of those seem to be working for me so maybe just a glitch? Nikkimaria (talk) 20:26, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

It's working for me too now, so yeah, it was just a glitch. RoundSquare (talk) 01:19, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

I'm having the same problem at the moment. --Icodense (talk) 10:50, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

@Icodense99 It looks like our access might have expired. We'll update at T330289 when we know more. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 14:17, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

No access to the journals of the "Royal Society of Chemistry" (RSC)

I should currently have access to the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Gold collection including several scientific journals - as also indicated on my Wikipedia Library landing page. When I attempted to access an article published in the RSC journal "Energy and Environmental Science" that should be included, I could not access the content, i.e., the content was beyond the paywall. Are there any known changes or problems? Kind regards, Espresso robusta (talk) 19:53, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

@Espresso robusta Thanks for the heads up, looks like our access has lapsed. Unfortunately we haven't heard from our contact there in a little while so I'm not sure how quickly this will be resolved, but we'll do what we can. I'll flag this access issue in the library for other users. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 15:05, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for your efforts! Best wishes, Espresso robusta (talk) 18:30, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

On the bright side, that journal has a 25 % open access preservation rate, vs. a 15 % average for RSC, so you might have good luck by using Unpaywall in your browser. :) Nemo 20:24, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

Surrender access?

Hey all! I've been granted access to e-Yearbook and BNI but can't ever seem to actually access anything. I have no problem with many other elements of WPL. I suspect it's either bc I had previous accounts with those services (under the same email) or because I use my phone for everything and maybe it doesn't vibe with that? Anyway I don't want to take up seats I'm not using so I'm hoping the access can be disconnected? Please advise. Thanks in advance. Jengod (talk) 01:59, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

BNI = BNA my bad Jengod (talk) 02:05, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

@Jengod For both of these collections you should have received an email with instructions on how to access the collections - can you check if you received these? Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 15:58, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Bad Gateway?

Is anyone else getting this message? I've tried numerous databases today and each has the same problem. Cambridge core "Bad gateway Error code 502", alexander street press "Bad Request", Ebsco "Bad Request", Gale "Bad Request", Hein Online "Bad Request", Jstor "400 Bad Request" etc. Can't figure out if it is a Mexico thing or a library thing. Cleared cache, cleared cookies, rebooted, same thing comes up repeatedly. SusunW (talk) 16:52, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

African collection missing.

hello. I check-up the list of collection but i didn't found library or document of africans history. Please can you direct me. I will be happy to found more. Komavo (talk) 17:24, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

@Komavo: I agree, there seems (at least so far) no dedicated collection for African History in the Wikipedia Library. But I found quite a lot scattered among the books and journals of more general publishers with a quick look around. Not in the Wikipedia Library but freely accessible is the General History of Africa from the UNESCO. A little bit older is The Cambridge History of Africa, a bit more recent The Cambridge History of South Africa, both accessible via the Wikipedia Library. There are also The Oxford Encyclopedia of African Historiography: Methods and Sources and the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. Several publishers have dedicated categories or pages for African History like this French one. There are bibliographies to help you find further resources e. g. Historiography and Methods of African History by Funso Afolayan or History and the Study of Africa by Jonathan Reynolds. Hartmut Bergenthums guide Afrika is in German and contains some broken links now. There are scholarly journals for African History such as The Journal of African History. HHill (talk) 21:41, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

hello HHill, thank you a lot for direction. I will check-up. Komavo (talk) 07:18, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

@Komavo We would love to add more African content into the library! We've been hoping to add African Journals Online for some time, but unfortunately they haven't had the capacity to work with us. Do you have any suggestions for content that's currently missing? Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 09:59, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

thank you for your support. For the moment i don't have any suggestion but when i am ready i will text you. I read the collection of african history so it is good that the history of africa is mooving to gether with the World history cause sometime we think that historians of other continent are hiding our history and développement. Now we will try the few we can with our community wikipedia. Thank a lot. Komavo (talk) 18:52, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

New Yorker?

Do we have any collections that offer a New Yorker magazine archive? I've run into a couple of articles I'd love to check but membership required etc. Jengod (talk) 05:47, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

EBSCO, Gale, and ProQuest all have portions of that archive. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:28, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle

https://brill-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/display/db/emco?rskey=gEsJVq&result=2 It would be great if this very important resource could be included in the Brill portfolio. Number of German libraries with a license < 5. --Historiograf (talk) 23:19, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

Newspapers.com clippings

I realized today that when I clip a Newspapers.com article under the new proxy access arrangement, it gives me a URL like https://www-newspapers-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/clip/121223543/obituary-for-bernard-m-patten/. If I cite that in an article, though, it's not accessible to readers who aren't eligible for TWL, and while I can manually modify the URL to something like https://www.newspapers.com/clip/121223543/obituary-for-bernard-m-patten/, that's not going to be intuitive for most editors. I went through today and fixed a bunch with en:WP:JWB, but it'd be nice if there was an easier solution. Just wanted to flag this issue for you all—thanks for all your work! Extraordinary Writ (talk) 03:13, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks @Extraordinary Writ! This is the unfortunate downside to proxy-based access. An editor made some suggestions on options to mitigate this here. I also believe that on English Wikipedia Citation bot will fix these retroactively. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 10:43, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

Invitation for DCW Conversation Hour

Hello TWL team, I am Aafi, founder of the Deoband Community Wikimedia. We have recently standardized our conversation hour: the DCW Conversation Hour. We would like to have someone from your team as a guest speaker in any of our upcoming sessions, likely in July or August 2023. If you are interested enough, please send an email at dcwwikimedia.org and we will continue this conversation further. Best, ─ The Aafī ^(talk) 12:42, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Sent you an email :) Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 13:54, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

@Samwalton9 (WMF), thanks for the email. Responded. ─ The Aafī ^(talk) 15:17, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

 This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. ─ The Aafī ^(talk) 15:17, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Newspapers.com - level of access change

Hi there, not sure if this is the right forum to raise this but I'll start here :-) I have newspapers.com access through TWL, and up until a couple of days ago I could view complete pages. That level of access seems to have been removed and now I can only search but not actually view the pages that the search finds, which isn't hugely helpful. Is this a change to the level of access given to TWL users or am I doing something wrong? -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 09:12, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

@ChrisTheDude Newspapers.com has moved to an automated level of access. To use Newspapers.com you can now log in to the library and click Access Collection under the Newspapers.com heading. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 09:56, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

@Samwalton9 (WMF) thanks for the response. That is what I did, but apparently my status is now "registered guest", meaning that I can't view actual pages. Is this because the higher level of access which I previously had has expired? -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 10:04, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

@ChrisTheDude If you're access the site at https://www-newspapers-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/ then the status of your individual login shouldn't matter - you should find that the site still operates as it did before in terms of being able to search and clip. I've just tested it and it works for me. What message are you seeing when trying to access pages? Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 10:08, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

@Samwalton9 (WMF) - hmmm, seems to work now. Bizarre. Sorry to have troubled you! -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 10:11, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

@ChrisTheDude No worries! There are some teething problems with this change :) Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 10:12, 24 March 2023 (UTC)