Gerald R. Ford may have governed during a time of economic stagnation, but his library has just laid claim to a cutting-edge distinction: being the first presidential depository to employ an official “Wikipedian in residence.â€
Michael Barera, a master’s student at the University of Michigan’s School of Information who has been editing Wikipedia articles for five years, started the job last week, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported. He is charged with improving the Wikipedia presence of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum, which is housed at the university’s Ann Arbor campus.
In 2010 the British Museum became the first organization to engage a Wikipedian in residence, which was seen at the time as an acknowledgment of the fact that Wikipedia articles about libraries, museums and other institutions were sometimes drawing far more traffic than the institution’s own Web sites. Since then, according to Wikipedia, some 30 others have followed suit, including the Smithsonian Institution, the Israel Museum and the Palace of Versailles.
