[Web4lib] Authority + Wikipedia

[Jim Campbell]

But how do we decide what is important and authoritative? With the
information explosion it is impossible for anyone to say what is truly
important outside of a very narrow area of expertise. Many of the standards
we have used for evaluating authority seem to be breaking down or perhaps
weren't that authoritative to begin with. Is the judgment of the Wikipedia
community necessarily worse than that of an encyclopedia publisher whose
primary job is to sell encyclopedias?  And then there's the problem if you
do decide to accept the authority of a community (e.g., you feel lucky at
Googling), that there are a lot of questions about which the community has
not arrived at a collective opinion, they just don't come up often enough.

A few examples of dubious authority:

Peer review. Every year there are cases where peer reviewed journals have
accepted papers that turn out to contain falsified results. Plus of course
the one a year or two ago where a social sciences journal accepted an
article that was intentionally gobbledygook.

Reputation of the publisher.  Well, read any reviewing journal.  Though my
favorite was 10-12 years ago when there was a big flap because St. Martin's
Press was going to publish a book by the Holocaust denier, David Irving.
The real shock wasn't that they intended to publish it, it was that their
history editor was completely unaware that Irving is a controversial figure.

And then a recent example. Brockhaus, who produce what is probably the most
respected encyclopedia in the German-speaking world, commissioned an article
on the new Pope. The author went out and researched the topic thoroughly.
Problem was that his research included the German version of Wikipedia and
he lifted some passages without attribution.

- Jim Campbell
Campbell at Virginia.edu
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org 
> [mailto:web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Forman, Andrew B
> Sent: Wednesday, October 12, 2005 4:32 PM
> To: web4lib at webjunction.org
> Subject: RE: [Web4lib] Authority + Wikipedia
> 
> librarian value vs. patron value?
> 
> I'd say the challenge/calling for libraries is to ensure that 
> what we see as important is also findable.  
> 
> If the information is not accessible/findable to an patron, 
> for that patron the information may as well not exist.
> 
> This is a transcendant issue that affects more than just 
> libraries -- i.e. will the kid learn about drugs from the 
> "streets" or from their parents, etc.
> 
> FWIW,
> a
> 
> Andrew Forman
> University of Iowa Libraries
> ISST Development
> 319 335 9152
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org
> [mailto:web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Thomale, J
> Sent: Wednesday, October 12, 2005 3:15 PM
> To: web4lib at webjunction.org
> Subject: RE: [Web4lib] Authority + Wikipedia
> 
> > Thanks for surfacing this important point Karen. Information that's
> hard
> > to
> > find will remain information that's hardly found. And, as
> evidence-based
> > studies have shown (see below), even within the realm of scholarly 
> > research, articles that are freely available online, and therefore 
> > more
> findable,
> > are
> > much more highly cited...which to me, suggests an important link
> between
> > findability and authority.
> 
> Despite this link between findability and [perceived] 
> authority, I think Karen's point is that this is (or should 
> be) a distressing development for librarians. Just because a 
> document is findable, this does not mean that its contents 
> are *better* or more truthful than a document that is not 
> findable. That scholarly research cites more freely available 
> online articles just because they are freely available online 
> is a commentary on human nature and the state of scholarly 
> research--but it should not be a prescription for the library 
> community.
> 
> In objective terms, the findability of a document does not 
> influence the quality of its information. As librarians, we 
> are supposed to be experts on helping people find and 
> retrieve quality information. Another way to say this is that 
> we are supposed to be experts on helping people find and 
> retrieve *authoritative* information. If we change our 
> traditional definition of "authority" to match this 
> constructivist definition of authority, then we are 
> essentially equating quality with availability and 
> (ultimately) popularity.
> 
> I think your article is pretty clear that this definition of 
> authority is not desirable for librarians. But, in general, I 
> think we should tread carefully this line between what *is* 
> happening to information on the web and what *should* be 
> happening, lest the theoretical underpinnings upon which 
> librarianship is based be yanked out from under us.
> 
> Jason Thomale
> Metadata Librarian
> Texas Tech University Libraries
> 
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