[Web4lib] Authority + Wikipedia

[Thomale, J]

> > 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.
> 
> Is there any indication that anyone thinks it is?

Not in so many words, but the statement that Peter made linking
findability with authority would lead you to that conclusion, wouldn't
it? "Authority" tends to indicate "truth," or at least, a high potential
to speak/contain the truth. Thus, if "findable" documents become more
authoritative than less findable ones (because they are found, and read,
and used), then they will be perceived to contain more truth, regardless
of their actual content. And the web makes it very easy to make some
documents vastly more findable than others--not because the author is
more knowledgeable about their subject, but because the author is
web-savvy. 

It's a ground-up way (and, IMHO, a backwards way) of thinking about
truth. It's the modern viewpoint juxtaposed against the postmodern: is
there objective Truth out there for us to discover? Or do we all create
our own "truth"?

Since it seems that I didn't make myself 100% clear, here is what I'm
saying in a nutshell:

Current applications on the web work under this ground-up,
constructionist, postmodern view of truth and authority. Google.
Wikipedia. Social tagging. Blogs. This was the point of Peter Morville's
article. On the web, things that are popular--i.e., things that are
linked to most often--are perceived as "more authoritative" and thus
"more truthful." Maybe not to you, and maybe not to me, but in the eyes
of the general population, I think this holds true.

As we continue our tentative entrance into this "brave new world" of
networked information, librarians should be fully cognizant of and take
great care that we don't espouse this viewpoint. As librarians, we very
much fight against this notion that a piece of information's veracity
depends on its popularity (or accessibility, or findability, or whatever
word you want to use). That's why so many librarians have reservations
about using Wikipedia as a sole, authoritative source of
information--because it has no authority other than what "we the people"
have given it. As librarians, we believe in some semblance of objective
authority. We believe in evaluating information more or less on its own
merits (i.e., quality information versus low quality information).

> > 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.
> 
> Here I disagree.  The prescription for the library community must
> surely be "make more things findable".  An article that can't be found
> might just as well not exist, however brilliantly argued it is.

I wholeheartedly agree with you. That *should* be the prescription for
the library community--to make as much [quality] information available
as possible. What I was saying should *not* be a prescription for the
library community is adopting this ground-up, constructivist view of
truth and authority that all these web applications are making so
tantalizing.

As others have already said, we should also teach people how to go about
evaluating information--not just in terms of "authority," but in terms
of veracity as well.

And I suppose the issue isn't so much findability as it is
accessibility. In a search in a typical online database, a user might
return a set of 50 documents. 10 of those might be available as full
text. 20 might be available in the user's local library. The other 20
are only available in journals to which the library does not subscribe.
In his/her research, the user only considers citing from the 10 articles
that are available as full text because he/she doesn't want to have to
go down physically to the library. All the documents are equally
findable, but only 10 are readily accessible. Those are the ones that
get cited--completely apart from the fact that the other 40 documents
might have been more appropriate. Those articles that are readily
available then become more widely cited.

So, besides making information more findable and more accessible, we
also have the responsibility to teach users that what's convenient isn't
always what's best. Sometimes they actually have to bring themselves
down to the library. Sometimes they actually have to order things via
ILL. The best information for their purposes may NOT be readily
available--and, while we work to ensure that all information is
available, we should also understand that sometimes it isn't.

> > 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 three unrelated things are being conflated here.  No-one is
> suggesting that availability is the same thing as authority -- only
> that the authority of an article is worthless if it's unavailable.
> And popularity is a complete red herring.  An article may achieve
> popularity through being available, but it certainly can't achieve
> authority through popularity.
 
Mike, I agree with you--I agree that this is how it *should* be. I agree
that quality, availability, and popularity should be three unrelated
things. And, to most librarians, they are. But what *I'm* seeing (and
maybe I'm just seeing things incorrectly) among some librarians of my
generation (i.e., young), :-) is this fundamental ideological shift.
Since it came to the forefront of public consciousness, the web has had
this promise of vastly democratizing information. It has carried with it
the ultimate realization of the relativist philosophy. All truth becomes
relative. People are free to construct and reinforce their own "truth"
regardless of how well that truth matches reality. Young librarians such
as myself have spent a large number of their formative years familiar
with the web and having these promises poured in our ears. And we've
seen that, on the web, things *do* achieve authority (however dubious
that authority may be) through popularity. Librarians, who have
traditionally been "gatekeepers" of information, have a responsibility
to be wary of and question this, no matter the guise under which it
comes.

And--in all honesty--perhaps this isn't that big of an ideological
shift. Information retrieval research has used this user-centric concept
of "relevance" for many years--what is considered relevant is in the
eyes of the user. There is no objective measure of relevance. So,
perhaps the leap isn't that great.

Anyway, I've rambled on WAY too long about this.

It was good to hear from you, Mike.

Jason Thomale
Metadata Librarian
Texas Tech University Libraries