Gratis & Libre: Wikipedia’s role in free and open history production and dissemination

ABSTRACT Wikipedia is by definition an encyclopedia, and the universal scope and availability it promises are ideals-in the pursuit of worldwide access to information. The history of literary production is equally the history of censorship, knowledge suppression, preservation, and material circulation. While widely accessed online sources might appear to have moved beyond these issues, they are in fact part of this complex balance between freedom and restriction. Therefore, it is useful to consider Wikipedia in terms other than as a website-as a library, as a dictionary, as an archive, as a book. In this light, we see that Wikipedia has many precedents in the history of knowledge dissemination and preservation, precedents as diverse as the Library of Alexandria, the Oxford English Dictionary or the Bible. Wikipedia is so different from what has gone before in any one field but so similar to what has happened in different aspects of many fields. This paper discusses how the idea of “free” is related to the production and dissemination of knowledge by looking at methods by which knowledge has historically been curtailed-through copyright; censorship; destruction; price; and language. Wikipedia is the latest in a long line of defenders of the ideal of free knowledge.