How do you add pages on Wikipedia?

What is the best way for a library/archive to go about adding external links to finding aids on existing Wikipedia pages when they hold the person's personal papers?

• I would love advice on how to appropriately include this information, as the intention is to promote people locating first person resources that are normally not published electronically and are generally hard to locate without specialized databases. Is this considered 'advertising' an institution, instead of being considered a reputable source for additional information related to a person? I have heard horror stories of accounts being suspended for spamming. Update: The specific example I am thinking of is a problem that developed out of posting in the 'External Links' section. This is one example of what was posted: == External links == * The [http://collguides.lib.uiowa.edu/?RG05.0001.13 Willard L. Boyd Papers] are housed at the University of Iowa Special Collections & University Archives. User talk response:  Please do not add promotional material to Wikipedia. While http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view about beliefs, products or services is acceptable, Wikipedia is not intended to be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_not_a_soapbox. Thank you. While the archives may be relevant to some articles, mass adding of links like this is generally considered spam. Please discuss the addition of material. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Gaijin42 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Gaijin42) 22:00, 4 November These links are the product of a long research project to identify pages where the University of Iowa Special Collections and Archives holds the manuscript collections of the individuals profiled in existing Wikipedia pages. Anyone researching that individual will need to know where their papers are held. It is the best most relevant information for researching that person. Please explain what you mean by "please discuss the addition of material?" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ananda01 (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AAnanda01&action=edit&redlink=1) 06:00, 13 November 2013 (UTC)colleen This was around the following edit to the Willard L Boyd article:  https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Willard_L._Boyd&diff=579164695&oldid=545673102

• Answer:

  Wikipedia is not a primary source of information, and as such is not setup to be the first or only place that document archives are published. Its articles are compedia of what so-called "secondary sources" — academics, journalists, and other writers — have to say about a given topic. Consider for example the Wikipedia article on historian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angie_Debo, one of my favorite biographical figures. It says in one place that a historian considers her master's thesis the first scholarly work on American isolationism. Note here that the statement is not that that the historian's claim is true, but that the historian said so. The fact is therefore sourced / cited to the historian's own book, not to Debo's thesis itself. A skeptical reader and other Wikipedia editors can look at the statement in the article, follow the link to the google book, and verify for themselves that yes, this historian made that statement. If the link were to Debo's own archive papers, nobody but an expert could tell if the Wikipedia statement had any truth to it. People sometimes wonder how they can get some interesting fact or truth they discover into Wikipedia and the fact is there's no easy way. Being in Wikipedia is the final result of the process of the process of researching and knowing, not the starting point. Something from an archive has to get noticed by an author, written about in context, and then it can be included. If the question is how to broadly make an archive's material more accessible, the archive itself should publish its material electronically, make sure it is friendly to the google spiders, and link appropriately with other institutions and pages that concern the topic. And then, the old fashioned way, make sure researchers know about it and that it's a friendly place for them to work, seek recognition and awareness, cultivate relationships. Articles do have a "see also" and "external links" section. With the consent of other editors, it's often appropriate to link the article about a person to the libraries and archives that contain their works. At the bottom of the Debo article there's a link to her correspondence archives a the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Newberry_Library. Interestingly, there's no link to the Oklahoma State University archive or others that hold her papers, I guess nobody got around to it.