Wikipedia:Wikisource

Wikisource is a digital library of public domain and freely licensed texts, films and similar material. Like Wikipedia, it is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation. It can be used by Wikipedians to provide the full text of documents, further reading or sources for citations.

What is Wikisource?
Wikisource is a library of primary sources. In relation to Wikipedia, Wikisource provides:
 * 1) The full text of documents (including song lyrics, where appropriate).
 * For example: Wikipedia's United States Declaration of Independence is an encyclopaedic article about the Declaration of Independence; Wikisource's United States Declaration of Independence is the text of the Declaration of Independence itself.
 * 1) Documents related to the subject of an article, for further reading.
 * For example: Wikipedia's USS Indianola (1862) is supported with a link to Capture of the Indianola on Wikisource, a first-hand account of a significant event in the article.
 * 1) Reliable sources for citations to properly reference an article on Wikipedia.

For specific information on how people more familiar with Wikipedia can contribute to Wikisource, see Wikisource:For Wikipedians.

Linking from Wikipedia
Wikisource articles can be linked from WP articles as described at Help:Interwikimedia links, namely by using a normal wikilink but prepended with either "s:" or "wikisource:", as in  which produces The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders, R.N.

Wikisource templates
Several sister project templates exist for Wikisource.

Using Wikisource as reference
Inclusion of text in Wikisource does not automatically justify mentioning of it in Wikipedia, because of potential differences between what Wikisource includes and what Wikipedia includes. Also, generally, entries in Wikipedia are optimally much more short and concise than entries in Wikisource. For example, Wikisource includes the entire work of On the Origin of Species, while the Wikipedia article on Evolution may mention it in a format such as: "In his publication of On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin formulated a scientific argument that natural selection is a mechanism for evolution".

Citing Wikisource in Wikipedia
Wikipedia has special citation templates for citing a text on Wikisource. There is one generic template, useful for any text on Wikisource, and several specific templates, useful for certain, specific texts on Wikisource.

Cite wikisource is the generic template. The simple form of this template is:

Moving texts from Wikipedia to Wikisource
If a primary source document has been added to Wikipedia, it can be moved to Wikisource instead. This covers the addition to an article of the full text of a document or full lyrics of a song.

To move complete pages, please see Help:Transwiki and/or Help:Import. This will preserve the editing history of the article after it is moved, which may be required for licensing purposes. However, because almost all texts in question are in the public domain, and no one can therefore claim any licence over them, it will usually be possible to cut and paste the text directly into a new page on Wikisource.

Please note that Wikisource prefers texts to be proofread from online scans, which act as Wikisource's equivalent to reliable sources. Simple text is still acceptable as long as a source is provided (e.g. an offline book or a copy in another digital library).