Wikipedia as a source of monolingual and multilingual information about the Spanish heritage

Abstract

The aim of the study was to analyze the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia as a tool for the dissemination of monolingual and multilingual information about the Spanish heritage. The sample consists of catalogued buildings and sites of cultural interest in a Spanish region. For that purpose, we examined to what extent articles about the buildings and sites are represented in Wikipedia that is, what kind of information is dedicated to each of them. Three different types of search in the encyclopaedia (browsing, lists and internal search engine) were performed for several months. In addition, we established to what extent Wikipedia includes multilingual information regarding the sample, that is, the number of languages in which the information is expressed, as well as articles translated into languages other than Spanish. The results show that only 21.73% of the buildings and sites that constitute the final sample have a separate article in Wikipedia, of which only 20.85% are in several languages, and 50.00% are properly described as translations. This leads us to conclude that, given the collaborative nature of this tool and in view of the cultural and economic importance of historical and cultural heritage, institutions should be responsible for promoting the multilingual dissemination of this type of information.