Happy Wikipedia Day!

Do you use Wikipedia? I have been hard pressed to find someone who hasn’t used Wikipedia in any capacity. When I started teaching information literacy classes back in 2011, I was a big believer in teaching people how to use Wikipedia responsibly. (Much to the chagrin of my colleagues at the time.)

I have an account but I have not edited a Wikipedia article, however, I do have a recurring donation every month to keep the site active. Plus it’s good karma!

What is Wikipedia?

To be sure, I’m shocked that I have to define Wikipedia since you’d be living under a rock to not know what it is! But just in case you don’t, Wikipedia is the free online encyclopedia with the guise of containing all of human knowledge. You do not need an account to access Wikipedia or to read Wikipedia articles. You do need an account to create and edit Wikipedia articles.

While content in Wikipedia is volunteer added (Wikipedians), the content must be peer reviewed and references must be provided to back up claims. 

The concept of Wikipedia was that information and knowledge should be freely available and that no one entity should control it. Wikipedia was the offshoot of Nupedia and a competitor of Microsoft’s Encarta and Encyclopedia Britannica. You can also think of Wikipedia as a large online library of information.

Wikipedia was launched on January 15, 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. The site was made live two days after the domain name was registered. The first page was in English and as of early 2026, there are over 7 million pages in the English language with over 66 million pages overall. There are over 350 languages with articles in Wikipedia. 

Wikipedia is a non-profit organization.

What and when is Wikipedia Day?

Wikipedia Day is the celebration of the birth of Wikipedia and its first edit. The celebration is held annually on January 15. 

2026 is Wikipedia’s 25th birthday.

It is also the same day that the Creative Commons was created. More on Creative Commons in a bit.

How can I celebrate Wikipedia Day?

In addition to donating money, creating an account, and editing articles, there are loads of other ways  to celebrate! Some locations, such as NYC, Chicago, and Seattle are having an in-person celebration. If you can’t make it, there is also a virtual celebration that will include talks and presentations.

What is Creative Commons?

The purpose of Creative Commons is to provide online resources such as videos, photos, and words, with copyrights to allow remixing and reuse of the content. Yes, you can disallow remixing and reuse of your work if you like. All Nerd Girl Industries workshops and slide decks “Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International” which means that my work must have attribution, it cannot be resold, and I do not allow anyone to build off my content. I choose this license because of how much energy, time, and brain power goes into my work and I do not want anyone to profit from it. However, my slide deck for “Not Your Mother’s Librarian” has a more open copyright since I give it away for free. The only thing I require for that slide deck is you give me attribution.

Creative Commons was created on the same day as Wikipedia, January 15, 2001.

Creating a Creative Commons license is free.

You can learn more about Creative Commons here.

What are other sites like Wikipedia?

Yes!

Wikipedia and its related sites are all hosted by Wikimedia Foundation (also started by Jimmy Wales). The Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit organization.

Those related sites are:

• Wikimedia Commons Freely available and use of media such as photos, videos, and sound recordings
• Wikidata Freely available information data)
• Wikispecies Information about all of life such as animals, plants, and more
• MediaWiki The software that runs Wikipedia and is freely available to use
• Wikinews Free news source
• Wikiversity Free online learning sources
• Wikiquote Collection of quotes
• Wikivoyage Travel information
• Wikisource Fee library of text and translations of text
• Wikitionary Free dictionary and thesaurus

Whew! That’s a lot of freely available information! A lot of it I did not know existed until I started researching it.

Wow! January seems to be a pretty big month in terms of freely available content!

Yep! We have Public Domain Day on January 1st and the celebration of Wikipedia and Creative Commons on January 15th. The goal of all these organizations is to have content easily and freely available to use.

How do you use Wikipedia and are you going to celebrate Wikipedia Day?

References

• —. Contributors. “Commemoration of Wikipedia Founding in 2001.” Wikimedia.org, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 20 Mar. 2005, meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Day. Accessed 12 Jan. 2026.
• —. “Creative Commons.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 13 Mar. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons. Accessed 12 Jan. 2026.
• —. “Event:Wikipedia 25 Virtual Celebration – Meta-Wiki.” Wikimedia.org, 2022, meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Event:Wikipedia_25_Virtual_Celebration. Accessed 12 Jan. 2026.
• —. “History of Wikipedia.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 3 Apr. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Wikipedia. Accessed 12 Jan. 2026.
• —.. “One-Day Conference for Wikipedia Day.” Wikimedia.org, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 27 Nov. 2019, meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Day_unconference. Accessed 12 Jan. 2026.
• —. “Wikipedia:Wikipedia Day.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 9 Jan. 2026, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Day. Accessed 12 Jan. 2026.
• —. “Wikipedia.” Wikimedia.org, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 5 Jan. 2003, meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia. Accessed 12 Jan. 2026.