Using Wikipedia to Boost Traffic to Digital Collections

There are 2 recent items that explain how libraries can harness the power of Web 2.o applications like Wikipedia to extend the reach of their collections and capture the attention of users who do not think of libraries when it comes to searching for information:

• The May/June 2007 issue of D-Lib Magazine has an article entitled Using Wikipedia to Extend Digital Collections by 2 authors from the University of Washington Libraries. The articles describes "a project to integrate the UW Libraries Digital Collections into the information workflow of our students by inserting links into the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. The idea for this project grew out of our reading of OCLC's 2005 report Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources which states that only 2% of college and university students begin searching for information at a library web site. It is, therefore, incumbent upon Librarians to look for new ways to reach out to our users where they begin their information search."
• The Free Government Information blog reports on the case of the University of North Texas libraries that greatly increased the usage of their local digital document and photograph collections by adding relevant links to Wikipedia articles. They created links in 600 different Wikipedia articles back to the library material. They report 400,000 unique users who visited them by clicking through from Wikipedia.