Encyclopedia of Libraries, Librarianship, and Information Science

Abstract

The Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit organization that aims to provide free and open access to knowledge around the world. Its mission is to empower people to share, access and contribute knowledge. Its central focus is the construction and maintenance of a collaborative platform that allows individuals from different parts of the world to create, edit and improve educational and informational content, based on free use licenses (Creative Commons) and public domain. Wikipedia is a clear example of this initiative; the open access encyclopedia has become one of the most consulted information sources in the world. In addition to Wikipedia, the Wikimedia Foundation sponsors other projects such as Wikimedia Commons (Images and multimedia), Wikidata (Database), Wikisource (Digital Library), Wikiversity (Learning resources), Wikibooks (Textbooks and manuals), Wiktionary (Dictionary), Wikiquote (Collection of citations), Wikinews (News), Wikispecies (Directory of species), Wikivoyage (Travel guide), Mediawiki (free software) and Meta-Wiki (Project coordination), among others.