Wikisource

For linking to or citing Wikisource, see Wikipedia:Wikisource.
Wikisource
The current Wikisource logo
Screenshot
Detail of the Wikisource multilingual portal main page.
Detail of the Wikisource multilingual portal main page
Type of site
Digital library
Available inMultilingual (79 active sub-domains)[1]
OwnerWikimedia Foundation
Created byUser-generated
URLwikisource.org
CommercialNo
RegistrationOptional
LaunchedNovember 24, 2003; 20 years ago (2003-11-24)[2]
Current statusOnline

Wikisource is an online wiki-based digital library of free-content textual sources operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikisource is the name of the project as a whole; it is also the name for each instance of that project, one for each language. The project's aim is to host all forms of free text, in many languages, and translations. Originally conceived as an archive to store useful or important historical texts, it has expanded to become a general-content library. The project officially began on November 24, 2003, under the name Project Sourceberg, a play on Project Gutenberg. The name Wikisource was adopted later that year and it received its own domain name.

The project holds works that are either in the public domain or freely licensed; professionally published works or historical source documents, not vanity products. Verification was initially made offline, or by trusting the reliability of other digital libraries. Now works are supported by online scans via the ProofreadPage extension, which ensures the reliability and accuracy of the project's texts.

Some individual Wikisources, each representing a specific language, now only allow works backed up with scans. While the bulk of its collection are texts, Wikisource as a whole hosts other media, from comics to film to audiobooks. Some Wikisources allow user-generated annotations, subject to the specific policies of the Wikisource in question. The project has come under criticism for lack of reliability but it is also cited by organisations such as the National Archives and Records Administration.[3]

As of November 2024, there are Wikisource subdomains active for 79 languages[1] comprising a total of 6,237,978 articles and 2,968 recently active editors.[4]

  1. ^ a b Wikimedia's MediaWiki API:Sitematrix. Retrieved November 2024 from Data:Wikipedia statistics/meta.tab
  2. ^ Ayers, Phoebe; Matthews, Charles; Yates, Ben (2008). How Wikipedia Works. No Starch Press. pp. 435–436. ISBN 978-1-59327-176-3.
  3. ^ "Transcribe | Citizen Archivist". Archived from the original on 31 October 2013. Retrieved 4 October 2013.
  4. ^ Wikimedia's MediaWiki API:Siteinfo. Retrieved November 2024 from Data:Wikipedia statistics/data.tab