At Maastricht University Library, we promote and facilitate the use of literary sources from our Special Collections through the development and organisation of research-based learning programmes as part of the Wikipedia Education Program. We are proud to share our experiences in the Open Access published article Where History Meets Modern: An Overview of Academic Primary Source Research-Based Learning Programs Aggregating Special Collections and Wikimedia.

Where history…

Examples of these programmes are ‘On Expedition’ at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, ‘Historical Book Review’ at the Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience and ‘Opening up old books’ at the Faculty of Science and Engineering. The central aim of these learning programs is to educate students on the social relevance of the Special Collections, such as the Jesuit library, which contains books (on philosophy, history, anatomy, literature, theology, law, and various social sciences) dating back to the beginning of the sixteenth century.

… meets modern.

By participating in these programmes, undergraduate students from various colleges are given the opportunity to develop their information literacy skills by gaining experience in conducting empirical literature research on primary historical sources and its publication through a popular open-access platform. Evaluations from students indicate that the unique combination of analysing historical literature and the publication of their review on a modern open-access platform led to increased motivation, readership, sense of responsibility, and understanding about the importance of open-access knowledge transfer and valorisation of information.

Want to know more?

Check out the article Where History Meets Modern, which was published (2021) in the open access edited volume ‘Wikipedia and Academic Libraries: A Global Project’ from Bridges, L. M., Pun, R., & Arteaga, R. A. (Eds.), Maize Books. The publication contains 19 chapters by 52 authors from Brazil, Canada, Hong Kong, Ireland, Kyrgyzstan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Scotland, Spain, and the United States. The chapters in this book are authored by both new and longtime members of the Wikimedia community, representing a range of experiences.

If, after reading, you want to know more about how the UM Library can support you in how to implement Wikipedia in your course, feel free to contact us via Ask your librarian.

Author: Odin Essers, curator Maastricht University’s Special Collections

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License.