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With 42 libraries at three campuses (St. George, Mississauga, Scarborough), UTL is the largest research library in Canada and the third largest research library in North America. It supports research, teaching, and cultural preservation across the University's decentralised and collegiate structure.
UTL counts among its treasures Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto Archives and Records Management, and various distinguished collections across its campuses and colleges. Open to the public, the Fisher Library is Canada’s largest repository of publicly accessible rare books and manuscripts. Fisher's subject strengths include book history and print culture, history of science and medicine, Canadiana, politics and philosophy, theology, and Hebraica and Judaica. Among Fisher's trove of print, graphic, and audiovisual material are the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493), Shakespeare's First Folio (1623), Newton's Principia (1687), Darwin's proof copy of On the Origin of Species (1859), and the papers of Margaret Atwood and Leonard Cohen. The Archives hold the memories of Ursula Franklin, Rodney Bobiwash, Helen Sawyer Hogg, and Henri Nouwen, among others.
UTL hosts many of these historical collections digitally. UTL also maintains a 214,000+ item Internet Archive (IA) collection and hosts an IA scanning centre leveraged by many Canadian libraries. It contributes heavily to the digitisation and web archiving of Canadian Government information.
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Latest
About UTL projects
Goals
- Help Wikipedia users easily discover and access UTL collections
- Update and add new articles on histories supported by UTL collections
- Share up-to-date metadata on Wikidata to improve linked open data
- Contribute to Wikipedia-Wikidata integration
- Help the University community better understand and use Wikipedia and Wikidata
- Collaborate and share with other GLAM-Wiki institutions to work toward barrier-free access to information
Scope
UTL works across Wikipedia and Wikidata. Its projects cover all areas supported by its publicly accessible collections. Examples include:
- History of science and medicine, especially surrounding the discovery of insulin and human anatomical illustrations
- Canadian Government information
- Biographies and works of notable figures whose fonds are held across the University's archives, whose personal and professional lives have interacted significantly with less visible local and global histories
- Soviet Samizdat culture
- Paleography
Content by tab
On this page, you will find a breakdown of UTL's Wikimedia projects:
- Collections projects improve article content and reference using UTL material
- Infrastructure projects make it easy for readers to find relevant UTL holdings (e.g. archives)
- Community projects help coordinate UTL community contributions to participants' interest areas
On this page, you will find:
- resources to help you edit and better use sources on Wikipedia
- an overview of UTL's digital resources available for use by editors
- events and programming for students and the community at large
On this page, you will find:
- resources for instructors to better understand and teach with Wikipedia
- upcoming workshops for instructors
On this page, you can join discussion and ask questions.