Blog Post #4: Another post about Wikipedia!?!?!

Following the thread of Louise’s post on Wikipedia…
I just finished reading a fascinating article about the online encyclopedia - Can History be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past by the historian Roy Rosenzweig at the Center for History and New Media.
It's a really long article, nearly 50 pages printed out with the references (!!) but he writes well and it kept my interest. I'll try and summarize a few of his main points and the relevance that his discussion has to libraries and the role that librarians can play in educating users.

He starts out with some history of the 6 year old site and also some statistics that attest to its popularity. The Alexa traffic rankings (a web tracking company?) put it at number #18 - above the NY Times, the Library of Congress, and Encyclopedia Brittanica!!! With this is mind, he asks "What are the potential implications for our practice as scholars, teachers, and purveyors of the past to the general public?" Now, while he’s a historian, and is writing from that point of view, we can ask this same question as librarians – as disseminators of all types of information to the general public.

Rosenzweig goes on to recount the results of a small experiment he conducted himself to judge how well Wikipedia stacks up against other reference sources. He looked at 25 Wikipedia biographies and judged them against comparable entries in Encarta, and American National Biography Online. (ANB) When it comes to overall coverage, Wikipedia beats out Encarta, but falls behind ANB, which also has more detailed, longer entries. As for accuracy, Rosensweig found that Wikipedia roughly matches Encarta, but once again falls behind ANB. In the 25 biographies he looked at, he found 4 obvious factual errors, as opposed to the 1 error out of the ANB entries. Encarta had about 3 errors. He points out that several other studies comparing Wikipedia to other encyclopedic sources have produced similar rather favorable results. This definitely seems to support the idea of “collective intelligence” that we have discussed in class.

Rosenzweig also makes several really good points that we as librarians need to keep in mind. First - Wikipedia is merely an online encyclopedia. Many people complain about the poor quality of writing on Wikipedia – but have we ever turned to encyclopedias for inspiration and glowing prose? Also, he points out the success and popularity of Wikipedia speaks volumes about the public’s need for free and accessible information! The ANB, while perhaps the most accurate and traditionally accepted reference source, is quite expensive, and many libraries have to forego other resources in order to subscribe to it. Should we really have to make these sort of choices?

Rosenzweig says educators need to pay attention to Wikipedia because students are using it - So, of course it follows that librarians need to pay attention to Wikipedia because our patrons are using it. We need to stop bad-mouthing it, and internet sources in general, and get back to what our jobs have always been – to educate our users and give them the tools to evaluate every resource they might come across in their daily life. And if you see a mistake - get in there and change it!