The Wikipedia Library/Newsletter/September-October 2021

The Wikipedia Library

Books & Bytes

Issue 47, September–October 2021

In this issue we highlight the latest developments on the Library Card platform and, as always, a roundup of news and community items related to libraries and digital knowledge.

Notifications to launch soon

The Wikipedia Library will soon be sending out a notification to let users know they are eligible for access. This notification will be rolled out gradually, so users with a higher edit count will see it first and those with a lower edit count may receive it later. This will be a one-time notification for those who have already passed the eligibility threshold; going forward users will receive the notification as they meet the threshold. See T288070 for updates on progress.

New Library Card search tool

The Library Card platform now includes a search tool. This tool is a hosted instance of EBSCO Discovery Service. It provides editors with an easy way to search across all of their available collections from a single location, removing the need to visit individual websites and allowing cross-cutting filtering. The tool presents Library Bundle content (for which users simply need to meet an automatically verified activity threshold) as the default results. It also indexes free-to-read content and provides links to open access versions where possible.

Share your thoughts on the search tool here!

New Library Card platform design

The Wikipedia Library is continuing with its design improvements. With the latest update, you can now mark collections you are authorized to access as favorites - they'll then show up in the Favorites tab, which will become the default tab for you once you've got at least one collection favorited. We hope this will make it easier to get right to the collections you're most interested in without needing to search through a bunch of other options. We've also added a filter based on whether a particular collection is indexed in the search tool (see above).

We'd love to hear what you think of the new UI - whether that's positive experiences, bugs and technical issues, or things you’d like to see changed, please share your thoughts here!

Bytes in brief

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