Use of Louisiana’s digital cultural heritage by Wikipedians

Analysis of how cultural heritage institutions’ (CHI) digital assets are being cited on Wikipedia can be beneficial to understanding user needs and interests as well as priorities for collection development and digitization. This case study details an analysis of Wikipedia links to online resources from Louisiana cultural heritage institutions in order to determine what types of cultural heritage resources users are citing on Wikipedia, what is the content of the Wikipedia articles with Louisiana CHI citations, and how this can influence the work of CHI. The results of the study include findings that digital library items and archival finding aids are the most cited sources from cultural heritage institutions on Wikipedia and are particularly popular for Louisiana-specific Wikipedia articles on society and the social sciences and culture and the arts. Some possible strategies for determining digitization and collection development priorities based on these findings are also detailed.

This is a post-print [post-peer review] version of a manuscript originally published in The Journal of Web

Librarianship 12, no. 2. doi:10.1080/19322909.2017.1391733