Template talk:Library resources box

External reviews of this template

The creator of this template wrote an explanation of it here - From Wikipedia to our libraries. This template was reviewed further at Boing Boing at Wikipedia and libraries: a match made in heaven. Blue Rasberry (talk) 23:41, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Internal reviews of this template

Wikipedia editor Thumperward has objected to my using the particular box template I am using and unboxed it. Please state specific of objections here so I can respond and/or use a different type of box. Unboxing the template is not helpful; I have already created inlined link templates {{Library resources about}} and {{Library resources by}} for those who want inlined links. I have reverted to the old box while discussions and alternative investigations are in progress. JohnMarkOckerbloom (talk) 15:12, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

There's a consensus that the {{sidebox}} format, which is what is used for links such as {{commons}}, should only be used for projects directly related to Wikipedia. All non-sister projects using this styling were converted away from using floating boxes several years ago. Using a floating box for this template incorrectly implies that the links are to Wikipedia-affiliated projects. Additionally, due to the limited space available in the external links section of most articles, having too many floating boxes there causes layout issues. It's not a case of using a "different type of box": it's a case of using inline links like every other external resource (with the exception of sister projects). Just to confirm: I have absolutely no objection with the actual contents of the links, which is a very worthwhile exercise: however, being strict about what can and cannot use the sidebox format is the only way to ensure that we don't have floating templates for every external site. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 15:27, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. I do see that the {{sidebar}} template that I had been calling has been described as a navigation template, and your description implies that that means internal navigation. However, more generally I have seen plenty of external links in Wikipedia side boxes (for example, links out to OCLC WorldCat in info-boxes for books), and when I've shown this template and the inline ones to others, I've usually heard a strong preference expressed for the box form.

I've avoided using any icons that could be confused for Wikipedia-sponsored initiatives, and my documentation already notes that it should not be given precedence over higher-priority sideboxes, and that the inline text alternative templates should be considered whenever a box would overly clutter a section. I also understand a general wish to avoid a different box for each external link; indeed, much of the point of a single service usable for links to *any* library is to minimize occurrences of individual-library links that would only be of interest to patrons of that individual library. Given the importance of libraries in research overall, and the demonstrated synergies between Wikipedia and libraries to date, though, I do think it a useful option to offer a general-purpose library links box for Wikipedia articles.

I'm happy to consider a different box form to minimize confusion, however. I'm having a look at the {{infobox}} template now, for instance. Responses and further suggestions welcome. JohnMarkOckerbloom (talk) 15:50, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

The box form is strongly preferred because it's so prominent: of course, that means that everyone wants to use it to highlight their particular project, and that's why we decided that the only fair solution was to avoid using templates for non-WMF external links in general. It's part of our content guidelines: Wikipedia:External links#Templates for external links. Specifically:

All templates except those for WMF "sister" projects should produce a normal, single-line, text-based external link without any favicons, bold-faced text, custom bullets, or other unusual formatting.

I don't see this consensus changing in the near future, as it's the only way to avoid being barraged by proposals to allow project X to have a floating link. it would probably be best simply to standardise around using the individual inline templates: I'll be happy to work on transitioning any existing uses of this one so that the existing work of adding it to articles isn't lost. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 16:01, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

John, I find the inline form to be quite acceptable from a user standpoint, and take Thumperward's objections as quite reasonable. The External Links section is a perfectly reasonable place for people to find links to libraries. LaMona (talk) 01:17, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

This is interesting, but I can't help thinking (as suggested below) a link to a special page, like the ISBN page, would be better. It would be nice to cut down on some visual clutter by combining the library links with infoboxes or {{Authority control}} (ideally combining all three).

There is also {{external media}} which is being used to add links to Khan Academy/Smarthistory videos across a range of visual arts pages. See Wikipedia:GLAM/smarthistory, and some feedback on the talk page there that the boxes are too visually intrusive. The discusion here about Wikipedia:External links#Templates for external links suggests that this sort of link should be limited to a "normal, single-line, text-based external link". See for example this versus this. -- Theramin (talk) 02:00, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

A question of scope - how widely should the Library resources box be used?

There's been an interesting discussion on my talk page about the scope of the Library resources box template. Should the box be added to every single article or ones chosen for some specific criteria? I can see an advantage in having it on all articles but others might disagree. Has this been discussed on the Village Pump (proposals) page? I can't see anything about it there but I haven't used the Village Pump before. If it hasn't been discussed I think we should start a conversation there. I thought I'd mention it here to get JohnMarkOckerbloom's opinion first because I figure this might be something you've thought about.

This may tie in to the discussion above about box vs. inline. Would an inline version be more acceptable to use on a Wikipedia-wide scale? Adding the 'Library link' template to many/all articles may be less controversial than adding the box. Lawsonstu (talk) 18:10, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

It seems rather obvious that library links should be added where there is a reasonable expectation that the article topic will successfully retrieve items in a wide variety of libraries. This ideally means that the person adding the link needs to do a test in more than on library (e.g a small library, a medium-sized library, and a research library) to determine if the link is useful in that case. If WP users experience frequent "link failure" then the impact of the library links will go negative. Someone has suggested that it begin with authors and with books, and this is not at all a bad suggestion. That would create a good test bed of uses and allow the ramp-up of the number of libraries available and some experimentation with a range of topics.LaMona (talk) 01:25, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm interesting in adding it to subjects that been subject to some exterior validation of their quality, although this shouldn't be taken to indicate any prejudice against wikipedia in general, at least on my part. It's more of a way of sidestepping any critique of excessive wikifocus, and also a way to isolate particular pages that have been analyzed for credibility in some rigorous way other than crowd-review. There is a chart attached to a paper recently-ish published in Nurse Education Today, for instance which analyzed the credibility of sources listed on health topic-related pages to see if they were a reasonable reference resource for nursing students. The chart can be seen here: reference chart. There are a good number of other research articles along the same lines which could provide a starting point for topics. Richardjames444 (talk) 00:28, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

How should library links be presented on Wikipedia?

Thanks to Thumperward and Lawsonstu for your comments.

Thumperward cites part of Wikipedia's External Links policy page where there are a couple of sentences on external links in templates:

Do not create large, graphical templates for non-WMF websites, even if these websites are also wikis. All templates except those for WMF "sister" projects should produce a normal, single-line, text-based external link without any favicons, bold-faced text, custom bullets, or other unusual formatting.

If we read the second sentence here broadly and strictly, then-- unless the library resources links become a sister project, which I suppose is also possible-- the {{Library resources box}} should not exist at all, and library links should only appear inline and not visually distinguished, as in the {{Library resources about}} and {{Library resources by}} templates. (And there's no point in the first quoted sentence, as it's redundant with the more restrictive second.)

Looking at actual usage in Wikipedia, though, I find multiple cases where library-related external links are in fact commonly used in visually distinctive templates. Here are some examples:

• At the end of the Mark Twain article, we find an {{Authority control}} template, with links out to WorldCat, VIAF, the Library of Congress, and the Deutschen Nationalbibbliothek. The template, which also appears in over 250,000 other articles, is visually distinguished as a banner line with color and bolding, and has links out to various libraries and their name headings databases. (I considered a banner line instead of a box as well, but banners seem to denote classification in Wikipedia, and the variety of library link types offered in my template seemed to me more comprehensible in a box than strung out in a banner line.)
• The Wikipedia article for Mark Twain's book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer includes in its main infobox an "OCLC number" line, which goes out to the WorldCat catalog entry for the book. Such lines with their external links also appear in the main infoboxes for a variety of other classics.
• Articles for more recent books, such as American Lion, often include in their main inbox an "ISBN" line with a live link out to a whole special external-links page. This page serves much the same purpose for titles as my templates serve for subjects and authors: it's intended to get readers to an external page where they can obtain the book. (In this case, users have to first stop at an intermediate page before they can follow an external link; in my template, cookie registration allows readers to skip the intermediate page and go directly out to their libraries with one click.)

One might object that the last two examples are links within the larger main infobox template, rather than forming their own sidebox template. I'm certainly open to having the library links I provide go into the main infobox template instead of having their own box, but as a relatively new registered Wikipedia editor, I was hesistant to propose changes in that main template right off the bat.

In any case, I believe there's a good case that the library resources links featured in my templates should also be presentable in a visually distinguished format, like the other external library-related links I give as examples above. This with make them both easier for readers to find, and also easier for editors to recognize as special features that they can add to relevant articles. (I agree with Lawsonstu that they could in theory be placed in just about any Wikipedia article, though as things stand now they will be more useful in some articles than in others. I have some ideas still in development related to how they could be useful even for obscure subjects not usually explicitly covered in libraries, but that's a topic for another time.)

I appreciate Thumperward's concern that we don't want to have Wikipedia articles cluttered up with lots of templates for every external site. But, even more so in some ways than the other examples I cite, these are not ordinary external links. They don't go to just one site, but to the reader's choice of hundreds of library sites, with more information about (or by) the subject of the article. (Right now, less than 2 weeks after I announced the templates, I have 142 libraries registered; at this rate, we'll have well over 200 libraries enabled in another couple of weeks.) The links help strengthen the existing special relationship that Wikipedia has with libraries, and which Wikipedia has tried to promote in a number of ways, including Wikipedia Loves Libraries, Wikipedian-in-residence programs, and multiple library-related mailing lists. They promote synergies between online ressearch via Wikipedia and offline and institutional research via libraries. And as a result, they have prompted unusual excitement in both the library and online communities. I've gotten requests and thank-yous from dozens of libraries already; the service has been featured (without my prompting) on Boing Boing and Making Light, and I've been asked for an interview for Wikipedia's own Signpost newspaper.

With all this in mind, I think there's a strong argument to be made that these links should be presentable in some sort of visually prominent and distinguished manner beyond simple inlined text. My {{Library resources box}} was the first form I thought would work for this, but I'm open to other possibilities, as well as counterarguments. In any case, I thank you both for your suggestions and concerns for the development of these links in Wikipedia. JohnMarkOckerbloom (talk) 01:17, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

My problem with this is that I have many 'local' libraries (public, university, workplace, etc) and wikipedia can't know without magic which of these libraries is going to (or likely to) hold the book in question. If there were a javascript to check all of their catalogues for the book in question, that might work? Stuartyeates (talk) 02:04, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Actually, it's worse than that, since the correct solution involves knowing my residency / enrollment / employment status at some of the orgs supporting those libraries, and that's non-public information. Stuartyeates (talk) 02:15, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm beginning to think that solution used with ISBNs (a landing page) is the best answer here. It avoids having multiple links on each article to the same domain, allows for a longer explanation of the purpose of the links and the project behind them, and means that we don't need to maintain coming up on a dozen different templates for the links. If community buy-in can be established for that, we should go for it. But it's going to take a while to sort out the required infrastructure in that case. I'd like to see this template's main MoS compliance issue (the floating box) addressed in the interim as a compromise. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 08:11, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Stuartyeates: These links aren't for particular books; they're for subjects (or authors); so anything relevant to that subject or author in the reader's library will potentially show up at the other end of the link. Whether something useful appears depends on the scope of the library's collection and the robustness of the library's catalog or discovery system. In my experience, my own university's library catalog will usually turn up something relevant on the links from Wikipedia that I've tried. If nothing useful shows up, I can try a different search in that catalog, or back up and try the "resources in other libraries" link to check my city's public library system, or WorldCat.

Thumperward: Users will hit a landing page if they choose the "other libraries" link (which is useful for the scenario I describe above, for example), or if they haven't chosen a preferred library system. So they'll have a chance to see what the resource is about, before they give a library preference. But the one-click link straight to the reader's preferred library is a very important piece of functionality as well. (I'm assuming it doesn't exist on the ISBN option simply because no one had bothered to implement it, or because the hit rate on individual ISBNs is relatively low compared to overall subjects.) The OCLC-number links I mentioned are one-click, for example; it's just that they always go to WorldCat instead of the user's chosen library system. One-click links straight to a reader's library make it much easier for a Wikipedia reader to find what they need at their local library, compared to having to scan down an ever-growing list of libraries before finding their own, or sifting through WorldCat results to figure out which ones are actually at local libraries.

If you're concerned that there are too many links in the template (the current box gives 2 by default, with options of up to 6), I would get rid of the direct-to-online-books links before I would get rid of the direct-to-preferred-library links. (The online books can alternatively be found from the "other libraries" landing page, or from an inlined-text template.) If your concern is that the links go to a third-party site for relaying (relaying that I'm trying to keep as unobtrusive as possible), I'm offering to help move the Wikipedia->library relayer from my Penn site onto Wikipedia itself, or onto a sister project. (One of the Wikimedia staff has let me know about their new Lua template programming functionality, which looks like it could potentially handle the relay logic. I don't yet know myself exactly how to implement this on Wikipedia myself, but I'm now working on setting up a Github site for sharing the code and data that I use to implement the relay at Penn.)

And if you'd prefer to get the matter off your own plate, or try to establish a broader consensus, I'm happy to have this issue submitted to whatever broader forum is appropriate, on Wikipedia or elsewhere. (I'm assuming, for instance, that a proposal to get rid of the box template would need to go through a TfD process, at the very least. There's also the Signpost.) I can also spread the word on my blog so that other Wikipedians and library folks can get the chance to weigh in. In any case, I thank you for your time and attention towards resolving these issues. JohnMarkOckerbloom (talk) 15:06, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

This should be implemented on-wiki or at worst on the toolserver...no reason to send to a third party. Perhaps this could could be implemented into the "toolbox" or "interaction" portion of the navigation bar.Smallman12q (talk) 00:46, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

• Comment First I want to thank JohnMarkOckerbloom (talk · contribs) for providing such a useful service to people. That was very generous of him. As for its use on Wikipedia, I would think that it would be best used in {{Infobox person}} as an optional parameter for authors. It might be useful with {{Infobox book}} also. The inline link seems appropriate too, but I would suggest it be formatted more toward Wikipedia conventions. Something like this;

  Find books by Dean Koontz and about Dean Koontz at your local library using University of Pennsylvania's Forward to Libraries service.

  with Forward to Libraries linking to a Wikipedia landing page at Wikipedia:Author sources explaining the service (similar to Wikipedia:Book sources). That way people would be informed that they are using an external service. Looking to the future, If JohnMarkOckerbloom is willing to have the service hosted at WMFLabs that would allay most people's concerns about using this service across all appropriate Wikipedia articles. Or converting the service to a Lua module—as mentioned above—would be even better. Eventually, I would like to see this type of service added to Wikidata so that it could be shared across all WMF projects as it seems like something that our readers would find very useful. Thanks. 64.40.54.61 (talk) 08:02, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Update

I've reverted to the WP:EL-compliant format for the time being, with no prejudice on further work. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 19:28, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Any problem with my editing your text version to make it look a bit better, after the TfD tags hopefully come off? (Until they do, all the templates will be looking ugly.) Your edits left some odd bits in the formatting that some folks emailing me had noted. (The edited version will still be text-only; I'll wait on restoring box format until I can switch the forwarder to a fully functional Wikimedia-based service. Hopefully that won't be much longer.) JohnMarkOckerbloom (talk) 14:22, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

I haven't heard a reply to date, and I've just moved the back-end to Wikimedia, so I'm restoring the box now. I'm happy to discuss this further in a RfC (as someone proposed) or in the discussion page here or in the WikiLibraries project. Hopefully the RfC process, unlike the TfD process, doesn't tag the templates in ways that muck up their appearance. JohnMarkOckerbloom (talk) 21:49, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Examples?

Are there examples of the templates in use? I looked at the "What links here" on the template pages and they don't appear to be in use so its hard to understand what they are about. I mean we already have templates for linking to Internet Archive and Project Gutenberg, if that is similar. -- Green Cardamom (talk) 22:19, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

An example of the "box" usage can be found at Louisa May Alcott#Further reading. An example of the "inline" usage can be found at Starvation#External links. Cheers. 64.40.54.61 (talk) 08:13, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Here's another example, at Human trafficking#External links An advantage of the library templates is that the "online books" links present a combined list of books from a variety of online sites including Hathi Trust, Project Gutenberg, Internet Archive, among many others such as government sources which are extremely unlikely to be individually listed. Instead of having a list of separate sources to check one by one, the online resources gives a single search. This is much more pleasant and efficient. -- Mary Mark Ockerbloom (talk) 17:00, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Running the forwarding service on Wikimedia Labs?

The user at 64.40.54.61 mentions Wikimedia Labs above as a place where the forwarding software could run. If I understand what's being proposed, it sounds like I could potentially install the Perl CGI scripts and data for my forwarding service there, so that forwarding to libraries would be done through Wikipedia/Wikimedia's own servers. It sounds like that could effectively turn the service into a sister project, and thereby bypass some of the concerns about external link templates. (And it would also mean that Wikimedia or Wikipedia folks could take the service over later on if I were unable to maintain it, or if they wanted to take on management responsibility.)

If I can easily install my software there, and regularly push out data and code updates, I'd be happy to try installing it there, and changing the templates to point to the Wikimedia-based forwarding service instead of the service at Penn (and otherwise keeping them the same). Is that an acceptable solution for other Wikipedians? If so, how can I get set up there?

(Folks who want to see what some of the code and data looks like can see the FTL Github repository. I don't have all the relevant data and code there yet, but it all should be releasable under various open licenses, which it appears makes it eligible for putting on Wikimedia Labs if it's otherwise acceptable.) JohnMarkOckerbloom (talk) 13:54, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi John. I've left a note at mw:User talk:MPelletier (WMF)#Help new user with WMFLabs, please asking for assistance with the WMFLabs stuff. I hope this helps as I think the FTL service would be a valuable resource for our readers. Best of luck. 64.40.54.81 (talk) 16:29, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Hello, John. 64. is quite correct that your tool falls squarely within the Lab's scope, and I'd be glad to help set you up in that endeavor. I have no doubt that the service being hosted on our servers with a provision to be able to keep maintaining it indefinitely will go a long way to address the community's concerns.

I'll take the more detailed discussion about how we can go about it on your talk page. — MPelletier (WMF) ^(talk) 17:46, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the offer of help. As I noted on my talk page, I have started the process of creating a Wikimedia Labs account, with the intention of installing the forwarding service on the WMF servers, and directing the back-end template links there instead of to Penn if all goes well. It may take a little while to install the service on the Labs servers-- my pre-Easter week is fairly busy-- but I hope it won't take overlong.

I haven't yet heard any objections to supporting a template box in connection with a sister project running in the Labs. But, with some of the comments above in mind, I'm now promoting the inlined link templates {{Library resources about}} and {{Library resources by}} at least as prominently as the box in my emails to libraries, and I plan to flesh out the documentation on those inlined templates. I'll monitor adoption of the various templates, and am open to their modification or substitution if a clear and broad consensus develops for the WMF-integrated service. JohnMarkOckerbloom (talk) 20:18, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your efforts, Dr. Ockerbloom. Once this is running on WMFLabs, I will start a community discussion to get the links added to book and author infoboxes as that would be more visible for our readers. If that goes well, I'd like to see if the service could be added to all our infoboxes to help our readers find the information they desire. Kind regards. 64.40.54.12 (talk) 15:37, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

This is an interesting effort, but I don't think it qualifies as a sister project, even if the code is running on Wikimedia Foundation servers. It probably would be best to stay away from the floating template box. - Eureka Lott 03:30, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Spam

Why is this template being spammed all overMoxy (talk) 00:45, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Because it's useful? The Interior (Talk) 00:19, 13 April 2013 (UTC)\

Certain users have little to actually contribute to articles beyond things like adding categories and boxes like these. This box can be useful in some articles, but certainly not in all. You should always remember to sign your posts, though, by using 4 tildes. Icarus of old (talk) 00:26, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps the resent spamming was not linked properly. We need to have a talk before this is spammed all over links like frogs is not usefull. Moxy (talk) 00:45, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

I think this (User_talk:CephasE#Spam) is going too far, a Library resources box for Australia is not really helpful, too unfocused. Library resources are linked best in articles about persons with a VIAF-id, which is used for lookup. Maybe the template page needs a little more guidance? --Atlasowa (talk) 13:41, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

User:Csusarah has now added it to over a hundred articles, including broad subjects like "Fiction", "Critique" and "Sound". This page could definitely use some guidance about appropriate usage. --McGeddon (talk) 11:35, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi, thank you for bringing this to my attention. I was trying to link students to the library from places they are likely to be according to their discipline, regardless of how broad the term was. However, I can see how this has inadvertently become spam-like. I think you are right - if the subject is too broad it doesn't return very good results. I will take greater care with the placement of the Library Resource Box. Perhaps this conversation will provide guidance for new users like me as User:Atlasowa mentioned above. Csusarah (talk) 03:33, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Inappropriate placement

This template has been inserted at the head of Elizabeth Goudge#Awards and honours (where is a stray "space comma" in each line of the display).

Perhaps finding such inappropriate placements can be automated.

I would prefer to see the WorldCat link more prominent. I am not sure how widely the name "WorldCat" may be known or its meaning readily inferred. Even so, at the head of {{Authority control}} it is now almost buried by navboxes in many External links sections. --P64 (talk) 01:50, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I moved it to external links (which it is) just above the Authority control box. --Atlasowa (talk) 07:21, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Something change?

Not sure if something has changed but some links seem to be no longer working. See this box for an example. I see what happened - conversion took a few minutes to work ...Sorry will fix. (talk) 22:00, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

RfC related to this template

There is and RfC at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Linking subjects to books at your local library (Forward to Libraries) that is related to this template. Users that are interested may wish to comment there. 64.40.54.57 (talk) 00:29, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

FTL server not responding

Times out. Links in the template box don't work. Not sure if this is transitory, intermittent or long term but wanted to make a notice. -- GreenC 17:55, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 25 March 2015

Botteville (talk) 01:18, 25 March 2015 (UTC) Hi guys,
I suggest |width={{{width|}}}
so we can adjust the width of the box!Botteville (talk) 01:18, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Not done: please make your requested changes to the template's sandbox first; see WP:TESTCASES. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 18:10, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

{{Authority control}}

Would anyone object to merging the functionality of this template into {{Authority control}}? —Ruud 17:37, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

There appear to be 5 Library resources templates (see the "See also" section for this template docs). Do you mean merge just for the box version or all? -- GreenC 17:45, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Let's start with this one. Two of the other template seem to work like "regular" external link templates and the other two are only used indirectly by this template, if I'm not mistaken. —Ruud 17:54, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

User:JohnMarkOckerbloom is probably best to have the discussion with, template creator. Recommend a ping via email as he edits intermittently. -- GreenC 18:06, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

I think I'd want to see more about how you envision it working. One of the issues is that the templates are used both on articles where there's a specific authority identifier (such as a person or an organization) and also on articles where there might or might not be (such as a topic). For the former, I'm already using authority control data in the implementation; for the latter, things get a bit more complex than what the authority control template seems to support. Another issue is user experience: would people be less likely to follow the library links if they were in an unexplained authority control line than in a fairly straightforwardly described "library resources" box or line? Though I'm not sure whether the proposal here is aimed more at changing the look and feel, or changing the way the mapping data is maintained. (I'm happy to discuss either.) JohnMarkOckerbloom (talk) 15:50, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Mobile

Why is this template not displaying in mobile view? --Obsuser (talk) 16:21, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

Unhelpful template

This template is not helpful and I don't see it being a positive link to resources on pages. When links are clicked there is either little to no information produced. Requiring end-users to select their library is also problematic. I don't think it should be used on pages until it is either refined or completely re-envisioned. -- BrillLyle (talk) 10:11, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

How-to-use video on Commons

If you are unsure of what this template is for, or how it works, I suggest viewing the following video on commons. It was created for the Philadelphia WikiSalon. Mary Mark Ockerbloom (talk) 13:57, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

• Wikisalon Wikipedia Library Resources Templates.webm

Wikidata

Why not pull id data (viaf/lccn) from Wikidata like {{Authority control}} does? – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 01:06, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

External links to library resources: RfC

A Request for Comment on external links to library resources, which may impact this template, has started: Wikipedia talk:External links#RfC: External links to library resources. Opinions, knowledge, and suggestions are sought. Please join in. SilkTork (talk) 10:20, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

Usage

This template would be more appropriate for article's talk page than the article itself because it is an addition to article like Template:Refideas. Eurohunter (talk) 10:50, 26 July 2023 (UTC)