Fear and Loathing of Wikipedia

Every so often, somebody brings it up on a library listserv.

Someone pops her virtual head in the door, and quite innocently asks: "What do we tell college students about Wikipedia?"

Poor, unsuspecting creature. Before she knows what's happened, a thundering stampede of librarians descends upon her, whipped into a frothy frenzy by professors waving their syllabi in the air. They shout, "Wikipedia is ruining academia!" "Don't trust Wikipedia!" "Thou shalt not cite Wikipedia!" (A sizable minority of professors are also carrying signs: "No online sources! No Internet research allowed!")

The problem is, these folks are missing the point, and while they moan, groan and ban the use of Wikipedia and "the web," a growing, quieter crowd of educators are doing something much more constructive and thoughtful: they are teaching their students about Wikipedia and about evaluating sources in general, whether these sources be in print, on the Web, or standing on a soapbox in Peoples' Park. These librarians and professors are making use of these sources, warts and all, to teach students how to evaluate information.

I'd be the last person to claim that everything found in Wikipedia can be trusted. Mistakes get made, intentional distortions are sometimes left unnoticed, biases creep in, and vandals throw in the names of their friends. I am awestruck at how well Wikipedia editors (aka, any and all of us) keep things pretty clean and accurate. The journal Nature concluded in 2005 that Wikipedia and Britannica have comparable rates of accuracy! (That conclusion is the source of much controversy.) Regardless -- academia isn't ready to accept sources that can't be traced to specific individuals or groups who have clear qualifications to be writing what they're writing. That means reliable sources are usually thought of as limited to peer-reviewed material that goes through the major publishers and content providers. How convenient for those who charge megabucks for access to this material!

But, guess what. Students will use Wikipedia anyway; they will use continue to visit web sites that come up in Google searches. When they graduate college, they won't have easy access to all that costly material anymore, anyway. We need to give these young adults the analytical tools to look at a statement, an article, a web page, and ask themselves certain things about it:

• Who wrote it? Is it attributed to anyone at all?
  
• Does this person or group have an agenda?
• Is this person or group credible? Is it a professor, a researcher, or just some dude?
  
• Is it out of date? How long ago was it last updated?

It amazes me that so many students get to college and have no idea that these questions are important. Maybe their high school teachers are part of the thundering herd yelling "Ban Wikipedia, down with Internet sources." More likely, these teachers are smart, skilled people who are being forced to teach to standardized tests, and who don't have the chance to cover such information seeking skills.

It's time to set some clear priorities in academia, and especially as academic librarians. The dividing line between subscription-based academic literature and electronic resources at large is disappearing fast. (It's all accessible through a web browser, isn't it?) That line in the sand is being washed away by the rising tide of online information. Let's teach students how to swim with that tide, not how to run from it.