During the second campaign of # 1Lib1Ref 2020, libraries invested themselves all over the world! Roy Cohen is head of cataloguing and classification department at the Elyachar central library in Israel, and unveils the first launch of the campaign in his institution!

1. Could you please tell us a little bit about your institution and yourself? What is your experience with Wikipedia?

The Technion (officially: Technion – Israel Institute of Technology) is one of 9 universities in Israel, that specializes in the exact sciences and engineering, and related fields such as architecture, medicine, industrial management, and education.

The Technion library system is made of the Elyachar Central Library and research libraries that are located in the faculties. The Central Library determines policies and guidelines and provides services for all the Technion libraries, including the library operating systems, the libraries’ web portal, acquisitions, cataloguing, and interlibrary loans. The faculty research libraries’ aim is to focus on the information needs of their students and academic staff.

I am the head of the cataloguing department in the Elyachar Central Library for almost 7 years now and have been written and updated a few articles in Wikipedia in the last 10 years, both in Hebrew and English. I would say that my knowledge of editing Wikipedia articles in intermediate.

2. For how long has the Elyachar central library been involved in the # 1Lib1Ref campaign, what is the angle of contribution of your institution and why?

This is the first time we are involved in the campaign. I have decided to add references to Hebrew articles on Technion academic personnel.

3. What is your or your library’s intention to carry on with the project in the future?

We are setting up a workshop that is aimed to provide the elementary editing tools in Wikipedia for those who do not have any notion on how the editing process works. The workshop will be carried out by me. By doing so we hope to recruit some Technion staff that will be involved in future campaigns as such.

4. What would you recommend to university libraries or those linked to technological institutes to identify relevant contributions to make or first steps to invest in #1Lib1Ref?

If a university library or any other institution would like to join the campaign they should identify persons who already know how to create and edit articles on Wikipedia so that they would join the campaign and perhaps teach others how to edit.