Seeing ourselves as others see us

[Sloan, Bernie]

Karen Schneider mentioned that she recently did a blog entry about Larry
Sanger's critique of Wikipedia. In her blogging she mentioned a 2003
piece by Clay Shirky. 

I ran across an article yesterday in which Shirky comments on Sanger's
critique of Wikipedia. It's interesting as both a follow-up to the
Web4Lib Wikipedia discussion earlier this week, and as a view of how
others sometimes see us when we discuss some of the shortcomings of
technological developments.

In his writeup, Shirky says things like "Of course librarians, teachers,
and academics don't like the Wikipedia. It works without privilege,
which is inimical to the way those professions operate" and "You can see
the reactionary core of the academy playing out in the horror around
Google digitizing books...the NY Times published a number of letters by
people insisting that real scholarship would still only be possible when
done in real libraries. The physical book, the hushed tones, the
monastic dedication, and (unspoken) the barriers to use, these are all
essential characteristics of the academy today."

Interesting reading: http://tinyurl.com/5nazp 

Bernie Sloan
Senior Library Information Systems Consultant, ILCSO
University of Illinois Office for Planning and Budgeting
616 E. Green Street, Suite 213
Champaign, IL  61820

Phone: (217) 333-4895
Fax:   (217) 265-0454
E-mail: bernies at uillinois.edu