The Wikipedia Library/Newsletter/November-December 2025

The Wikipedia Library

Books & Bytes

Issue 72, November–December 2025

In this issue we highlight renewed and expanded partnerships, Open Science collaborations, and, as always, a roundup of news and community items related to libraries and digital knowledge.

Renewed partnerships

The Wikipedia Library is announcing renewed and expanded partnerships:

British Newspaper Archive: searchable digitized archives of British and Irish newspapers. Note that while access is available to all eligible users, you will need to create a free user account on the BNA site to access full text.
Findmypast: billions of searchable records of census, directory and historical record information.
Expanded ProQuest access now includes ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global (PQDT Global), Ulrichsweb, ProQuest Central, Literature Online (LION), Chinese Newspapers Collection, and ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times.
BioOne has now moved to Library Bundle and is available to all users without needing to apply.

See all available partners on your My Collections page.

Spotlight: Strengthening Wikimedia Collaborations with and for Open Science

This section is adapted from a Diff post by Julian Cueto. Open access is about unlocking research and making scientific knowledge freely available to everyone. For Wikipedians, it's not an abstract ideal—it's essential to ensuring people can find reliable, high-quality information where they already look for it.

Every month, thousands visit English Wikipedia to learn about climate change (75,000 readers), HIV/AIDS (70,000), or the Russo-Ukrainian War (300,000). Behind those pages are thousands of volunteers who curate and improve the content. Open access helps them do that work. It lets research flow beyond academia and reach the public who need it. But how do we build better bridges between Wikimedians and the open access communities worldwide?

A recent project surveyed all affiliates of the Wikimedia movement to get an understanding of what current open access and open science activities within the Wikimedia movement look like. Roughly 20 % responded, of which 90 % expressed an interest in being informed of, or engaged in, open science activities within the movement. There is thus a strong interest in collaboration.

Almost half of the respondents stated that they already engage in open science activities in one way or another – showing that there is a strong foundation to build upon. Of those replying that they are already engaging in open science activities, activities involved advocacy for better legislation or policies; building networks (such as with libraries) and collaborating with researchers and research institutions to add and improve content on the Wikimedia platforms, organizing Wiki campaigns related to science or sometimes even to conduct research and publish in open-access journals; developing and sharing open educational resources and promoting citizen science activities; or organizing conferences related to science.

Affiliates were also interested in:

Exploring funding opportunities for open science work
International collaboration to lower barriers for engaging in open science initiatives
Communicating and sharing the word about open science projects and activities in affiliates and other parts of the movement
Finding ways to make Wikimedia content more aligned with the FAIR principles