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The Wikipedia Library

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The Wikipedia Library is a Wikimedia Foundation program that gives active Wikimedians free access to paywalled research material to use for research and citations on Wikimedia projects. The Wikipedia Library provides access to over 100 content collections in more than 30 languages from publishers around the world.

The collections include publishers of academic books and journals, such as Cambridge University Press, Elsevier, and Sage; research databases, like JSTOR, ProQuest Central, and Gale; and media and news outlets, such as The Wall Street Journal, The Telegraph, The Hindu, De Standaard, and many more.

The Wikipedia Library is available to active, experienced contributors to Wikimedia projects: users who have completed at least 6 months of editing, made more than 500 edits across all projects, and made at least 10 edits in the last 30 days. If you meet these requirements and don't have any active blocks on your account, you can log in with your Wikimedia account at wikipedialibrary.org. If you're not sure if you're eligible, just try logging in! Users with blocks who are still editing productively on another Wikimedia project can contact the Library team to request an exemption.

The Wikipedia Library
Contact us
Post a message on the Library's talk page, or send an email to wikipedialibrary@wikimedia.org.
Stay up-to-date
Find out about new additions to the Library by subscribing to the Books & Bytes newsletter or following updates on the Diff blog.
Request a resource
If you need access to a resource that isn't available in the Library, you can request it.

How does the library work?

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After logging in with a Wikimedia account, all eligible editors can immediately access a large amount of content via the Library Bundle. All Library Bundle collections are accessed via a web proxy: upon clicking 'access collection', you will be taken to the partner's website via a modified URL, where you can access their content without paywalls. Please note that sometimes we may not have access to all of the partners' content, for example, some books and journals could still be paywalled.

Other collections have limited seats and are available by application. This is to ensure that the limited seats are distributed to editors who will use the collection to improve Wikimedia projects. The Library team will review these applications and, if approved, respond via email with details on how to access the content. Some of these collections will be available via web proxy but many use voucher codes or individual accounts and the approval and set-up process could take a few weeks.

You can search across many of the collections from the Library itself by using the search bar at the top of the interface. Collections searchable via this search bar have a magnifier icon in the left top corner of their tile. A faded magnifier icon means that the collection is partially indexed for search.

The magnifier icon indicates that content has been indexed by the Library's search.

Watch a detailed overview of how the Library works.

How do partnerships work?

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The Wikimedia Foundation does not pay for subscriptions for the content available in the library. Instead, we form strategic partnerships with publishers, communicating the benefits of being visible within one of the most widely used sources of information on the internet. Wikimedia projects receive 15-20 billion pageviews every month and are available in more than 300 languages. Being cited on Wikimedia projects can lead to significant readership for publishers.

The Wikipedia Library has over 100 collections from partners, with content in more than 30 languages. Many of the world's top academic publishers, university presses, content aggregators, and newspapers are Library partners. Building these partnerships takes a fair amount of time as it involves establishing contact with the right people, persuading them of the benefits, addressing legal concerns, and implementing different access configurations. You can find out about new additions to the Library by subscribing to the bi-monthly Books & Bytes newsletter or following quarterly updates on the Diff blog.

If you're a publisher interested in making your content available to Wikipedia editors, learn more about our partnership model, or book a meeting with a partnerships manager.

Get more involved

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If you're a publisher interested in making your content available to Wikipedia editors, learn more about our partnership model, or book a meeting with a partnerships manager.

Although the Library is a Wikimedia Foundation program, we collaborate with volunteers, affiliates, and user groups to expand awareness and impact of the Library. You can:

  • IDENTIFY RELIABLE SOURCES. We are always building new partnerships and particularly want to work with publishers who have content in languages other than English. Suggest or upvote collections for the library, or get in touch directly if you can help to connect us with a publisher.
  • BUILD AWARENESS IN YOUR COMMUNITY. Contact us to collaborate on a plan to increase your community's usage of the Library.
  • CONTRIBUTE CODE. The Wikipedia Library repository is hosted on Github (see the Getting Started guide), and open tasks can be found on Phabricator. We endeavour to respond to pull requests promptly, but please move the corresponding Phabricator ticket to the 'Code review requests' column on the Moderator-Tools-Team board to ensure a response from us.
  • TRANSLATE INFORMATION. Make the Library more accessible to your community by translating this page, The Wikipedia Library platform (via Translatewiki), and our Books & Bytes newsletter into other languages.

Frequently asked questions

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Why can't I see open access content in The Wikipedia Library?

The Library is focused on securing content that is not freely available to Wikimedia contributors. If a content collection is already widely accessible, we do not need to host it in the library.

Is The Wikipedia Library an encouragement for paywalled citations?

The Wikipedia Library aims to unlock paywalled citations for use by Wikimedia contributors, making them more accessible than before. Contributors can then summarise these citations, making some of the information contained within freely available to the general public. Editors are not required to use Library resources, and many communities have a preference for open access links or citations.

Does the Wikimedia Foundation pay for the content in the library?

The Wikimedia Foundation does not pay for subscriptions for The Wikipedia Library; instead, we build strategic partnerships with publishers by communicating the many benefits of visibility on Wikipedia, for the publisher and their networks of researchers and authors. This is increasingly important as search and reading behaviours are changing rapidly.

How do you decide which publishers to partner with?

Our primary consideration is whether the community considers the content to be a reliable source for Wikimedia projects. After that, we prioritise suggestions and look at whether a publisher helps to close language or content gaps in the library or on our projects.

If a specific resource is unavailable in the library, what is the best way to request access?

The easiest way to do this would be to make a suggestion or upvote suggestions that have already been made. If you already have a contact at the publisher, please contact us directly at wikipedialibrary@wikimedia.org. Please note that these partnerships can take a considerable amount of time to materialize and we're not always successful.

Is there an easy way to access proxied links without searching?

These solutions won't work on every link, but hopefully they can help improve your access:

If your question isn't answered here, post a message on the Library's talk page, or send an email to wikipedialibrary@wikimedia.org.

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