Wikipedia for Access to publicly funded information

Even if you only find the name of the institution that holds what you are looking for and some links.......

Farah Hancock

Farah Hancock is a Newsroom reporter based in Auckland who writes on conservation, technology and health.

Newsroom

The travelling Wikipedia salesperson

Wikipedia is the internet we were all promised. Knowledge available to all, free of charge. Mike Dickison has spent the year showing New Zealand institutions how they can set tax payer funded-material free from cabinets and hard drives for all to learn from.
For a year Mike Dickison has been New Zealand’s highest-profile, and possibly only, encyclopaedia salesperson.
With his life in boxes in the boot of his car he's clocked up 16,000 km, lived in 55 different places and despite the nomadic year left his toothbrush behind only once.
He wasn’t selling sets of hardbound books, or even Encarta cds. He has been trying to sell New Zealand organisations on the value of sharing their treasures on Wikipedia.
With the internet being the first port of call for information, and with Google often serving up Wikipedia pages as the first result in a search it’s a no-brainer as a free way to share material. New Zealand though, has lagged behind other countries publishing content to the free online repository of knowledge.

Dickison thinks part of the problem lies in the small number of people creating and editing pages in New Zealand. Wikipedia runs mainly on the volunteer efforts of people. Anyone can create or edit an article.
According to the Wikimedia Foundation when Dickison started, there were only 250 regular New Zealand editors.

There’s also a lack of institutional awareness and support.
“It really just feels like we're lagging, culturally lagging. There hasn't been a strong push or a user group or any real publicity or funding gone into promoting Wikipedia in New Zealand until now.”
Dickison had been the natural history curator of Whanganui Museum. Last year he successfully applied to the Wikimedia Foundation for a $61,000 grant to be New Zealand’s Wikipedian-at-large to try and shift thinking and behaviour.
“It’s cheap and easy to put stuff online. Institutions that are publicly funded have an obligation I think to share the stuff that belongs to the New Zealand public with the public.”

continued,  https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2019/07/10/674920/the-travelling-wikipedia-salesperson