The British Museum collaborates with Wikipedia

The British Museum has begun an unusual collaboration with Wikipedia -- the online, volunteer-written encyclopedia -- to help ensure that the museum's expertise and notable artifacts are reflected in the digital reference's pages.

Among those wandering the galleries was the museum's first Wikipedian in residence, who will spend five weeks in the museum's offices to build a relationship between the two organizations -- one founded in 1753, the other in 2001.

"I looked at how many Rosetta Stone page views there were at Wikipedia," said Matthew Cock, who is in charge of the museum's website and is supervising the collaboration. "That is perhaps our iconic object, and five times as many people go to the Wikipedia article as to ours.