CUNY’s Wikimedian in Residence
2026 Library Publishing Showcase Week: Cultivating the Commons
The CUNY Wikimedian-in-Residence is an initiative through the CUNY Office of Library Services and the CUNY Archives project, funded by Craig Newmark Philanthropies and in partnership with Wikimedia New York City. The efforts of this position combine library publishing objectives of raising awareness of CUNY archival holdings, providing impactful student editing experience, and demonstrating the value of local knowledge.
What’s special about this program?
Having a Wikimedian-in-Residence does the triple magic of empowering CUNY’s diverse student body, highlighting CUNY’s amazing resources, and supporting CUNY’s teachers to connect the two. Where library services can often seem reserved spaces for serious researchers, a Wikimedian-in-Residence is library publishing outreach embodied. We’re able to offer class visits and edit-a-thon support to interested faculty, lowering the barrier of entry for professors, which lowers the barrier for students who may not know that they can contribute directly to Wikipedia. We’re also lucky that our Wikimedian-in-Residence, Richard Knipel, is an incredible advocate for local knowledge and for CUNY!
This new initiative is currently measuring impact with quarterly briefs and a 2025 by the Numbers roundup that captures the number of classes visited, the number of students, the number of edits, and other data points.
Why library publishing?
Because the Wikimedian-in-Residence is based in the Office of Library Services, the role has an easy link to primary source materials in our 26 campuses’ archives and to our central institutional resources. The Wikimedian-in-Residence outreach serves CUNY’s mission to improve public access to knowledge, Wikipedia’s efforts to expand and engage a diverse editorial pool, and the libraries’ efforts to support students’ research skills. Supporting this work in the library demonstrates our dedication to information access across the full life cycle of research, from archives of primary sources, to research publications, to tertiary encyclopedic knowledge shared for the public good.
Advice for colleagues working with a library publishing program?
Engaging Wikipedia at your library is an excellent way to support student learning and information literacy. On top of that, you enable your students and faculty to contribute important local knowledge to the broader information landscape. Please follow the project here.