Extraordinary Resonance: UTA Libraries Exceeds 40 Million Views on Wikimedia Commons

Michael Barera stepped into his role as University and Labor Archivist at the University of Texas at Arlington Libraries Special Collections in 2019 with thirteen years of Wikipedia experience—and a passion for sharing archival materials on the open-access platform.

“Wikipedia was actually my first introduction to archives,” Barera said. “At the end of my high school career, I learned about the massive content partnership between the Bundesarchiv and Wikimedia Commons that was putting hundreds of thousands of digitized photographs documenting German history onto Commons and into Wikipedia articles—this really opened my eyes to the incredible resources that archives have and the potential for sharing them with a fellow not-for-profit educational institution like Wikipedia.”

Within three months of joining the organization, Barera facilitated a content collaboration between UTA Libraries and Wikimedia Commons, the media repository associated with Wikipedia. His work has resulted in 40 million pageviews of UTA Libraries content across languages as of February 2022.

“It is quite gratifying and humbling to see a number as big as 40 million pageviews,” Barera said. “I knew that we were having a major impact on Wikipedia, and Wikipedia was providing a lot more views for our materials, but I did not think that we were going to be anywhere close to 40 million views of Wikipedia pages with our content on it.”

Pages with the most views include King of the Hill (English language), Independencia de México (Spanish language), Texas (German language), and Manifest destiny (in English, German, and French).

In addition to independently adding images to existing Wikipedia articles, Barera has also led Wikipedia article development workshops. These meetups have resulted in either the creation or expansion of several articles, including: Emerson Emory, which was created for Black History Month in 2020; Anton R. Roessler, developed in collaboration with Cartographic Archivist Ben Huseman; Africae Tabula Nova, which was created to support the Virginia Garrett Lectures and “Searching for Africa” map exhibit last September; and finally Open Knowledge Repository in support of the Libraries’ Open Access Week events last October.

Gretchen Trkay, associate university librarian and co-interim department head for Special Collections, believes Barera is paving a new future for open archives—while also highlighting the Libraries on a major platform.

“Michael’s leadership in this area has yielded incredible results and inspired others in the Libraries to see new possibilities within their roles,” Trkay said. “We are so thankful for his work on Wikipedia to elevate the profile of the Libraries’ archival materials and can’t wait to see what milestone he hits next.”

Reflecting on the future, Barera’s goals are simple.

“Ideally, to keep the pipeline flowing—for example, there are so many more maps in our cartographic collections, many of which have not yet been digitized, that will benefit Wikipedia considerably,” he said. “Also, only the Tarrant County portion of the Jenkins Garrett Texas Postcard Collection has been digitized and uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, but there is so much great content from across the state that could be digitized and shared, too. The possibilities are endless!”

At the end of the day, Barera is thrilled with the results he’s already seen—and thankful for the opportunity to explore what archives can be.

“40 million views really represent a lot of resonance,” Barera said. “I’ve certainly been empowered by the UTA Libraries’ perpetual beta, risk-taking culture to pursue such an unorthodox project, and I really do think that the results of our Wikipedia partnership, both quantitatively and qualitatively, are quite extraordinary.”