Talk:The Wikipedia Library

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Question, comments, suggestion, concern, or discussion about the library? Place it here.

Many thanks to everyone involved in making it possible for us to use so much via WP-Library, and my best wishes to you all for the new year 2026. Tozina (talk) 21:23, 2 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

thank you very much and Happy new year!!! Natalia Sanchez Prieto (talk) 18:29, 5 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

The OECD Data and iLibrary are unavailable. The page says, "Website is not accessible via this address." Thatsme314 (talk) 17:34, 5 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

@Thatsme314 Thanks for the heads up. Looks like a Cloudflare error - I've filed T413859 and we'll get in touch with them. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 10:54, 6 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

I would like to access one volume of a multi-volume work. However, this is no longer possible. Before the service problems, access to the volumes was unrestricted. It would be nice if de-gruyter-brill would also unlock multi-volume works.

https://www-degruyterbrill-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/serial/gvhjschb5-b/html

https://www-degruyterbrill-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/document/doi/10.14315/9783641248178/html

https://www-degruyterbrill-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/serial/mega1-b/html#volumes

Ettiwdreg (talk) 00:42, 11 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

On 2026 Jan 13, I attended an EBSCO Academy seminar from EBSCO employee Lisa Jones. The topic was EBSCO's Business Searching products, including the EBSCO Business Source databases and the EBSCO Business Searching Interface. In addition to interesting tidbits like Harvard Business Review being written for "upper-level management", I liked that the EBSCO Business Searching Interface offers services that let us browse company profiles by industry. Would you be interested in setting up EBSCO Business Searching Interface? Jones said that the Business Searching Interface comes free with Business Source Complete.

Thatsme314 (talk) 03:43, 16 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

I also just sent a request through the link https://wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org/suggest . Thatsme314 (talk) 03:48, 16 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Moved from User talk:The Wikipedia Library.

hola. no entiendo lo que quieras decirme pero mi idioma es español att:plazafrank Plazafrank (talk) 20:44, 23 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Hola! Soy parte del equipo de La Biblioteca de Wikipedia. Estamos enviando correos a los usuarios de la biblioteca para contestar una breve encuesta. ¿Me podrías decir qué es lo que no entiendes? SCardenas (WMF) (talk) 21:17, 23 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Moved from User talk:The Wikipedia Library.

Salut!

J'ai reçu une alerte sur Méta-Wiki m'informant que j'avais reçu un courriel, l'aperçu indiquant “The Wikipedia Library vous a envoyé un courriel. La Bibliothèque Wikipédia a besoin de votre aide!”.

Pourtant, je n'ai aucun nouveau courriel. J'ai cherché dans tous mes dossiers—notamment “Courrier indésirable”—mais je ne le trouve pas.

S'agit-il de quelque chose de privé? Sinon, pouvez-vous la poster sur ma page de discussion?

Merci – EmDashUser002 (Talk | Contribs) @ 03:02, 24 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Même remarque, après de nombreuses vérifications, je n'ai malheureusement rien reçu. Jérémy-Günther-Heinz Jähnick (talk) 05:54, 24 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Même cas de figure par ici. Abalg (talk) 17:55, 24 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Pareil. Le message a disparu ! CéCédille (talk) 23:07, 24 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Il s'agit d'une enquête auprès des utilisateurs de la bibliothèque. Si vous ne le trouvez pas dans vos courriers indésirables, vérifiez peut-être quelle adresse est enregistrée dans vos préférences ? Il est également possible qu'il y ait eu un problème technique lors de l'envoi. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:44, 28 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Merci @Nikkimaria. Je l'ai bien reçu, mais deux jours après la notification wiki. Abalg (talk) 19:56, 31 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

I would like to access one volume of a multi-volume work. However, this is no longer possible. Before the service problems, access to the volumes was unrestricted. It would be nice if de-gruyter-brill would also unlock multi-volume works.

https://www-degruyterbrill-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/serial/gvhjschb5-b/html

https://www-degruyterbrill-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/document/doi/10.14315/9783641248178/html

https://www-degruyterbrill-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/serial/mega1-b/html#volumes

https://www-degruyterbrill-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/document/doi/10.14315/9783641247454/html

Ettiwdreg (talk) 22:49, 26 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Two questions here. I take it that Wikimedia's Newspapers.com subscription has lapsed as it seems to have disappeared now? But at least we have the British Newspaper Archive back, so swings and roundabouts.

My other question is, how much access to Oxford Academic do we get? I searched for this chapter and I had no free access to it, which was slightly disappointing. Thanks in advance. Simon Harley (talk) 15:54, 27 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Since ACM became Open Access at the start of this year, is it necessary to include it as a part of the available collections in the Wikipedia Library? Would keeping the ACM Digital Library collection as part of the Wikipedia Library take up the space for another potential collection that is not Open Access? Halikandry (talk) 06:36, 28 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

There is no limit to the number of partners. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:48, 28 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

I changed an inaccessible link to newspapers.com to a clipping, and when I tested it using private browsing (which is how I found out the source was not accessible) and was told that was my second of five free articles.Vchimpanzee (talk) 19:02, 30 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

w:en:Wikipedia talk:The Wikipedia Library/Archive 12#Can't access newspapers.com reported account renewal delays a few months ago. You may need to go to https://wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org/partners/26/ and either apply or extend your account. Simon Harley, I see you mentioned a similar problem above. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:08, 30 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

What is the "Search the library" box at the top of https://wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org/users/my_library/ supposed to do? I'm assuming en:federated search, i.e. it takes the search terms you type into the box, runs them against all the individual services, and gives you a combined result? But that's not what happens.

If I do a search on "carlisle & finch", I get a single results page with 19 entries on it. But if I dig down into Gale/General Onefile and do the exact same search, I get results that I didn't get in the federated search. So I'm kind of confused about how I should be doing my searches. Should I always be running searches against the individual services, one by one, to get the best results? — The preceding unsigned comment was added by RoySmith (talk) 01:39, 1 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

@RoySmith Good question! You're right, in essence, that this is what the search bar does. It uses EBSCO Discovery Service to search content from many (but not all) of the publishers available via The Wikipedia Library. Configuring this search tool is as much art as it is science, so it's not always a 1:1 match with what we have available if you navigate to collections directly, and some collections simply can't be indexed in the tool (notably ProQuest). If you look in the corner of a card in My Library you'll see a magnifying glass for publishers we're fairly confident are indexed correctly in the search tool, and no magnifying glass if they need to be browsed individually. So my recommendation is to use the main search bar first, see if you find what you're looking for, and if not you can still check relevant individual collections. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 15:57, 3 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, that explains what I'm seeing. This same issue exists even within the individual services. Gale, for example, has their own collection of over 100 "research products". ProQuest does the same thing. Even en:NYPL makes "Search books, music, and movies" distinct from "Search the Research Catalog". I guess in the case of Gale and ProQuest, each of these is an individually marketable product they can sell, so I kind of see the logic there. Not sure why NYPL does it, though. Even more confusing why sometimes you can find stuff in books.google.com or scholar.google.com that you can't find in their top-level search. Oh well, things would be different I was in charge! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by RoySmith (talk) 16:22, 3 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

I've seen some news articles about worsening search results recently. One claim is that ad revenue depends on how many searches you run, so maximizing the number of times you have to search is better for the search engine company – up until the point that it gets so bad that you switch to a different search engine. I have run into the problem with Google search; an "all" search doesn't turn up books, and sometimes if I quote a few words from a book that I was looking at just a few minutes ago in Google Books, it says there are no results matching that.

The TWL provider that I am finding most interesting but most complicated to use is Perlego. It's full-text textbooks, but there's no easy way to find a textbook that contains the stuff you want to read about. You have to know the name of the textbook first, or at least a plausible guess about it (i.e., you can search for "vaccine", and you will find books with that word in the title, but you won't find ordinary medical textbooks that have a chapter on vaccines). WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:04, 3 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

When I go to degruyterbrill via the link on the Wikipedia Library page, the top of the degruyterbrill webpage says “Nicht authentifiziert“ (not authenticated) and I can only access their Open Access ebooks. What can I do? --Jossi2 (talk) 17:45, 6 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

I’ve found out now that this problem occurs only with Firefox Browser. Other browsers work fine. --Jossi2 (talk) 10:13, 20 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

Hi all -- Just received a note in Wikipedia, saying that I had a message in 'another wiki' (i.e. Wikimedia). The note did not specify what it was for, apart for the the link to The Wikipedia Library. Can someone please enlighten me, what this entails (feel free to move this comment afterwards) :) Cheers all, -- Kmilling (talk) 13:04, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

@Kmilling I'm honestly not sure what this notification would have been! Could you share the text of the notice, and perhaps any links that it contained? Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 13:43, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Hi @Samwalton9 (WMF) -- The note I received from user:The Wikipedia Library here on Wikimedia contained the following the message:

"This is a role account for The Wikipedia Library project, managed by the Wikimedia Foundation. It may be used to post messages, or send emails, but will never edit Wikimedia content. This user page or talk page may receive edits from WMF staff instead of the account itself. This user's talk page may not be closely monitored - please direct questions about The Wikipedia Library to m:Talk:The Wikipedia Library or wikipedialibrarywikimedia.org".

Why exactly received this message is a mystery to me ;) -- Kmilling (talk) 13:21, 19 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

In my alerts (a month ago), I received "The Wikipedia Library‬ sent you an email". I don't know what it is about either. -- Otr500 (talk) 03:55, 2 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

@Otr500 We contacted folks about a survey we were running for TWL. The survey has now closed. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 14:57, 2 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

Thank you, I would think even closed I should have been able to find something in the history. I was lost when I received the alert so maybe there should be a link with the alert. I do not recall finding one. -- Otr500 (talk) 17:36, 2 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

I am here for same reason, I guess 3 months ago I got a message saying :

"The Wikipedia Library‬ sent you an email.

The Wikipedia Library needs your help!"

I kept expecting there was some way to open the message more fully, but maybe that was the whole message and I was supposed to check gmail?

I think so, checking gmail I see a link to:

https://wikimediafoundation.limesurvey.net/

which now says:

We are sorry but the survey is expired and no longer available.

For further information please contact Administrator:

wikipedialibrary@wikimedia.org

Mathiastck (talk) 20:06, 10 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

I can't access the contents of Wikilala anymore. It asks me to log in :/ Nanahuatl (talk) 01:14, 17 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

https://wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org/partners/137/ seems to offer me a three-day free trial. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:28, 17 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Hi,

On the suggestion page, La Lettre should be removed, as it has been added to the Wikimedia Library :).

Thanks, — Jules* ^talk 13:49, 17 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

It appears that we do not have access to those, for example the New Pauly and many others that would be very useful for our work. Spiros71 (talk) 12:03, 19 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

I find the Oxford access via Wikipedia Library almost always worthless. It seems to be mainly a ton of redundant encyclopedia entries.

My most common needed is for etymology, which would be in "OED", but that does not seem to be accessible. Any hints on using the Oxford content? Johnjbarton (talk) 03:43, 26 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

The OED itself is not available, though I've heard that most people living in the UK can get access through their local library. Perlego has some books on etymology.

I've been very happy with Oxford Reference, but I don't do much with etymology. You might start by looking directly in The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology there. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:14, 26 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

A huge thanks to the 4,900+ of you who took the time to fill out the Wikipedia Library survey we ran recently! I've written up the key results from this survey, and would love to hear what you think. If you have any questions, or suggestions on how we can tackle some of the findings, please let me know! Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 10:22, 3 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

Since last week, Grove Music has a lock on all of its content. The same with Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. What happened? Thieu1972 (talk) 22:27, 6 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

All Oxford based content is not available, for reasons unclear. There's a Phabricator thread here: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T418834 Biologo-in-erba (talk) 08:13, 7 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

I'm a bit unsure of what logistical issues block us from accessing the ProQuest thesis database, considering we pay for multiple other of ProQuest's databases. It's been my most-wanted resource, since it's basically impossible to find PhD theses from many universities elsewhere. I understand ProQuest is probably charging a pretty penny for it, but I have to imagine on pure scale and diversity of content, this would be one of the most useful resources we could get for the project. Generalissima (talk) 07:41, 9 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

@Generalissima In fact, we don't pay for any of the content in The Wikipedia Library :) We're able to negotiate access with these publishers either through their desire to support a public good/non-profit website, or by talking to them about the benefits that joining the library brings. In particular, it is often motivating to them that providing this access increases the rate at which their content is cited & linked on Wikipedia. The downside to this is that each publisher, and each collection from those publishers, needs to be individually negotiated, we can't just throw some more money in and subscribe to something new. Often times there are legal or other considerations publishers need to figure out to add a collection into this agreement. For ProQuest, we have an ongoing discussion with them regarding various collections editors have requested and have been able to expand the available collections somewhat over the years. I don't recall what the latest was on this collection in particular, but we'll look into it and bring it up with them again! Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 12:15, 9 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

Please update American National Biography (which is an OUP resource) as "Temporarily unavailable" per https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T418834. I'm having the same issue there. ミラP@Miraclepine 20:21, 12 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

Is there a list of what journals the library does not have access to?

Another editor was looking for does Wikimedia have completed https://www.jstor.org/stable/40329696 Wakelamp (talk) 03:56, 18 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

@Wakelamp Journal-level lists would be hard to maintain, but to this specific question, yes we have access to this item. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 11:38, 18 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

I have been trying the Verification. I think the tool has potential, especially to flag content that is not verified by given sources. Two points of contact between that tool and The Wikipedia Library:

1. Verification needs access to the text of sources, many of which are only available to editors with TWL credentials. To be sure, the technical challenge of leveraging TWL credential for source verification are significant.
2. The TWL model of expanded access to publisher sites based on track record of editors might also work with AI providers. For example my free-tier Gemini key fails above a certain number of API calls. Google might agree to allow authenticated editors with track records to run more queries.

Johnjbarton (talk) 01:21, 30 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

Pinging @Alaexis. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:00, 30 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

Having access to TWL would be awesome, is there tooling for programmatic access to it?

Another difficulty that applies to human users too is that searching for something in TWL is not always straightforward since the search at the top doesn't index all the sources.

Curious what people here think about your second suggestion. Now we have a (rather informal) partnership with publicai.co who very graciously allocated some credits for Wikipedia tools. Solving it at scale via partnerships or using internal resources would be great. Alaexis (talk) 06:49, 30 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

If you've got (e.g.,) a DOI link, then changing the URL (from https://www.partner-website.com/source.html to https://www-partner-website-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/source.html) might work, assuming the editor is logged into TWL. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:56, 30 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

@Johnjbarton @Alaexis Hi both, thanks for starting this discussion. Regarding verification and access to TWL sources, for now I would ask that you don't attempt to add any TWL paths as part of analysing sources in the script - I think it would be, at best, hacky, and currently goes against TWL's terms of use, which prohibit "Automatically scraping or downloading restricted content from publishers" and "Data mining metadata without permission". If the AI response provided by the tool includes a link to content that is available in the library then I do think WhatamIdoing's idea of proxying those links is a good one, if the user is eligible to access TWL.

Regarding including AI tools in The Wikipedia Library, this is something we're currently having discussions about. We've heard from some users that they would find this valuable, and from others that they don't want to see us adding AI tools to the library. This would be a slightly different kind of website to provide access to, we almost exclusively provide access to reliable source publishers at the moment. If we decide to include AI tools in the library I'll be sure to update here. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 11:09, 30 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

@Samwalton9 (WMF), thanks for responding

"If the AI response provided by the tool includes a link to content that is available in the library then I do think WhatamIdoing's idea of proxying those links is a good one, if the user is eligible to access TWL."

That could work. Is there a reliable way to know whether a n article exists in TWL? Though even if there isn't, we can add a button "Try your luck in the Wikipedia Library" :) Would replacing periods with dashes in the domain always work? Alaexis (talk) 14:24, 30 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

@Alaexis The best way is to prepend http://wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/login?url= to the URL, that will then adjust it as required. I don't think there's a great way of knowing whether a given article exists, but you could check the domains against our EZProxy config (some URLs are directly in that file, others are in stanza files like https://help.oclc.org/Library_Management/EZproxy/EZproxy_database_stanzas/Database_stanzas_B/BrillOnline). It might be time consuming to generate the consolidated list, but that would probably be the most accurate list of domains if you were able to make it. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 14:34, 30 March 2026 (UTC)Reply