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December 14, 2005

Should we use tools like Wikipedia when looking for information?

The Wikipedia is an online collaborative encyclopedia which allows anyone with Internet access to create or modify an entry. It has been assailed by critics lately, after an anonymous user posted false information in an entry for journalist John Seigenthaler during May 2005. The poster has since come forward to accept blame and apologize. The factual errors introduced into the article included this inflammatory statement.

John Seigenthaler Sr. was the assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the early 1960's. For a brief time, he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby. Nothing was ever proven.

The inaccurate information regarding Mr. Seigenthaler remained on Wikipedia for four months until a friend notified him of the entry. He was understandably outraged. It has since been completely expunged from the public version of Wikipedia. Interstingly, there is a Wikipedia encyclopedia entry on the debacle. For more information, see the USA Today story entitled It’s online, but is it true?

Should we use Wikipedia?

One thing is for sure. If reliability of information is of any importance (e.g., for use in a school paper), Wikipedia should never be used as your only source. Instead, you should seek more authoritative options, like books or Web sites hosted by educational or governmental institutions (the .edu and .gov Internet domains). Much of the criticism of Wikipedia is justified. Because articles are not fact-checked before they are submitted, any given entry might be replete with errors.

If convenience and currency of information is more important than accuracy, Wikipedia can be a valuable resource. For example, if you’ve planned a trip to the zoo with your eight-year-old and you want to impress him with water buffalo trivia, you may consider using Wikipedia as a good place to start.

Also, if you know very little of the terminology of a topic, it may be hard to construct an effective Internet search. Wikipedia can offer a broad overview, including key terms. For example, if you want to know more about quantum mechanics, you can use the Wikipedia entry to discover the names of concepts like the uncertainty principle and wave-particle duality. These are great Internet search phrases which should allow you to locate authoritative sources of information.

The lack of a traditional editorial function at Wikipedia also allows content to be very current. For example, Stanley “Tookie” Williams III, founder of the Crips gang, was executed in California by lethal injection on December 13, 2005. The Wikipedia entry for Mr. Williams already reflected his execution later that same day. This information will take months to make it into a print encyclopedia.

The bottom line is this: don’t be afraid to try Wikipedia, but make sure to use other sources to validate your information if accuracy is important.

[mbo]

Posted by hinsdalereference at 10:13 AM

December 13, 2005

Best Web Sites

Wonderful as they are, sometimes the huge, all-purpose search engines don’t find what you’re looking for—either you get no hits, or too many to sift through. And if you find a great site, how can you tell whether it’s authoritative?

Here are some Web sites vetted by librarians and indexed by subject to help you do a more targeted search. You can browse or search archives; some offer alerts when new sites are added. The lack of duplication in the sites they cover is a testimony to the magnitude and diversity of the World Wide Web.

The Librarians’ Internet Index started in the early 1990s as one librarian’s bookmarks and has grown into a “publicly funded Web site and weekly newsletter serving California, Washington state, the nation, and the world.”

The New York Public Library’s Best of the Web

The Toronto Public Library’s Virtual Reference Library

The Best Free Reference Web Sites 2005 is the seventh in an annual series from the American Library Association’s Machine-Assisted Reference Section (MARS) of the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA). Sites from 1999 to 2004 are listed in a Combined Index.

The Scout Project is compiled by librarians, faculty, and students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It has three parts: Research and Education, General Interest, and Network Tools.

Neat New Stuff I Found on the Web This Week by Marylaine Block, a librarian-turned-writer, speaker, trainer, and consultant on the Internet

ResearchBuzz focuses on “search engines, new data managing software, browser technology, large compendiums of information, Web directories” and other technical or technique-oriented aspects of Web searching. Its author, Tara Calishain, co-wrote Google Hacks and other books about Web searching techniques.

If you find a site using a major search tool like Google, how can you determine whether you can rely on its information? Recently some intentionally planted misinformation was discovered on Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia created and edited by Web users. The best advice is to verify what you find in another source.

Librarians at the University of California at Berkeley offer suggestions for Evaluating Web Pages: Techniques to Apply & Questions to Ask.

[NI]

Posted by hinsdalereference at 11:04 AM