At the next IS Division meeting (March 12), there will be a discussion of Wikipedia that I'd love to participate in but won't be able to, as I expect to be out on family leave by then. I'd like to put in a few quick thoughts about how I use Wikipedia and how I teach students about. But first, let me offer this link to the index of all previous posts about Wikipedia on this blog.
I find myself referring to entries in Wikipedia fairly often, but I do so with my eyes wide open about the shifting nature of the content and the quality issues that are much discussed. It's worth noting here that several years ago, content from my Teaching Librarian web site was plagiarized on Wikipedia in the entry there on "digital reference." I wrote about that on my blog a while ago:
Those two posts remain the most popular ones on my blog.
One way that you can easily demonstrate the fluid nature of content in Wikipedia is via this great screencast by Jon Udell on the "umlaut heavy metal" entry (warning: the screencast shows the page being vandalized at times with language that may offend some). Although two years old, Udell's screencast is notable for its sped-up footage of how pages in Wikipedia evolve over time.
Keeping in mind the quality issues and changing content issues in Wikipedia, I still find myself using the site regularly. One of the better features of the entries are the references at the end of many entries. If I'm searching for a web site (particularly for an organization or institution that I think may exist but I don't know any particular names), I'll do a search in Wikipedia for entries that might contain references to the kind of web sites I'm looking for. Such an approach turns Wikipedia into a glorified subject directory of web sites, along the lines of the Librarians' Internet Index.
As librarians, Wikipedia offers to us the opportunity for many teachable moments with our students. We can discuss it (in formal instruction in the classroom or less formal teaching opportunities that crop up regularly in reference interactions). Many students are unaware that anyone can edit entries; revealing that to them that the "hive mind" (here's a nice discussion of that term from an article in Newsweek) is at work opens up the chance to discuss who gets to be an author, what is an authority, and how information is shaped and refined.
For an interesting philosophical take on the limits of the mass construction of knowledge online, see Jaron Lanier's essay from last year, "Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism" and all the great responses to that essay.
After the March 12 meeting, I hope that someone will post a message to this blog summarizing the discussion, as I'll want to read it (and perhaps the adjuncts who work at the desk may also).
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