Print Wikipedia is an art project by

Michael Mandiberg Michael Mandiberg (born December 22, 1977) is an American artist, programmer, designer and educator. Mandiberg's works have been exhibited at venues, including the New Museum for Contemporary Art, New York City; the transmediale festival, Berlin ...

that included a printed edition of 106

volumes Volume is a measure of occupied three-dimensional space. It is often quantified numerically using SI derived units (such as the cubic metre and litre) or by various imperial or US customary units (such as the gallon, quart, cubic inch). The defi ...

of the

English Wikipedia The English Wikipedia is, along with the Simple English Wikipedia, one of two English-language editions of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. It was founded on January 15, 2001, as Wikipedia's first edition, and, as of , has the most arti ...

as it existed on April 7, 2015. The bound paper volumes, each running 700 pages, represented a fraction of the 7,473 total volumes necessary to render the encyclopedia's extant text on that date. As first shown at the Denny Gallery in New York City, United States, during summer 2015, the project included a display of the spines of the first 1,980 volumes in the set. The 106 printed volumes included only text of the encyclopedia articles: images and references were omitted. Supplementing the printed volumes of encyclopedia articles, additional print volumes included the appendix to all 7.5 million

contributors Contributor may refer to: * Author, the originator of any written work which is contributed to a publication ** Freelance writer, an author working as an independent contractor for a publication *** Contributor network, a freelance writing arrangem ...

to English Wikipedia (in 36 volumes) and a table of contents (in 91 volumes). Wikipedia Contributor Appendix (Detail)

Background

Mandiberg originally conceived the project in 2009 but ran into technical difficulties. They then engaged an assistant, Jonathan Kirinathan, to aid with the programming of the code to compile, format and upload the entire contents of English Wikipedia. The print files were uploaded to book self-publisher Lulu.com and made available for printout as paper volumes. Mandiberg's motivation was to answer the question, "How big is it?" For a

big data Though used sometimes loosely partly because of a lack of formal definition, the interpretation that seems to best describe Big data is the one associated with large body of information that we could not comprehend when used only in smaller am ...

entity, its size is on the threshold of what can be perceived as a collection of volumes, but not so large as to overwhelm one's senses, such as the data files of

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dust ...

or the

NSA The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collec ...

Katherine Maher Katherine Roberts Maher (; born April 18, 1983) is a former chief executive officer and executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Maher worked for UNICEF, the National Democratic Instit ...

, the executive director of the

Wikimedia Foundation The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., or Wikimedia for short and abbreviated as WMF, is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California and registered as a charitable foundation under local laws. Best know ...

, described it as "a gesture at knowledge". Wikimedia cooperated with the project and Lulu.com helped fund it. The task took three years, and the upload process took 24 days, 3 hours and 18 minutes. It was completed on 12 July 2015.

PediaPress PediaPress GmbH is a software development and print-on-demand company located in Mainz, Germany. The company is a spin-off of Brainbot Technologies AG. It allows users to create customized books from wiki content using an automated PDF file bui ...

had attempted to raise money for a full English Wikipedia printout on Indiegogo in 2014, with a goal of $50,000 (£30,000), but the project was pulled. The abandoned project had intended to print 1,000 volumes, of 1,200 pages each: a total of 1,200,000 pages, roughly equal to of shelf space. Mandiberg later assured people that they would not be printing out the entire collection, claiming that an entire collection is not necessary for people to comprehend the true size of Wikipedia, and, once people have seen a portion of it, it will help them realize its size. Mandiberg estimates that the printing costs of a full printout would be around $500,000. The Denny art exhibit featured only a selection of actual printed volumes with about 2,000 of the other volumes represented as spines on the wall. The show revolved around the actual upload of the print files to Lulu.com.

Influence

Similar art projects have printed part of the

German Wikipedia The German Wikipedia (german: Deutschsprachige Wikipedia) is the German-language edition of Wikipedia, a free and publicly editable online encyclopedia. Founded on March 16, 2001, it is the second-oldest Wikipedia (after the English Wikipedi ...

(Berlin, 2016) and the

Dutch Wikipedia The Dutch Wikipedia ( nl, Nederlandstalige Wikipedia) is the Dutch-language edition of the free online encyclopedia, Wikipedia. It was founded on 19 June 2001. As of , the Dutch Wikipedia is the -largest Wikipedia edition, with articles. It w ...

(Ghent, 2016).

References

External links

Print Wikipedia web site
{{Wikipedia 2015 books American art Books about Wikipedia Articles containing video clips 2015 in art

Background

Influence

See also

References

External links