FW: [Web4lib] The Wikipedia Gotcha -- a cosmic perspective

[Lars Aronsson]

Binkley, Peter wrote:

> Thanks to John Hubbard, this idea has a home at LISWiki now (see
> forwarded note below). [...] http://liswiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia

When I saw LISwiki I thought I should check up if there are any 
opinions about Google Book Search, especially after having read 
(web4lib member) Anders Ericson's harsh words against them on the 
official website of the Norwegian Library Association,
http://www.norskbibliotekforening.no/article.php?id=1523
http://www.norskbibliotekforening.no/article.php?id=1547

(I'll leave it to him to explain and translate.)

I don't share Anders' marxist point of view, but find it 
interesting that all aspects are analyzed.

However, at http://liswiki.org/wiki/Google
one can read that this is "An Internet search engine favored by 
librarians and most of the world."

This is the kind of naive enthusiasm that, when suggested to 
Germans, is met with "enthusiasm? we tried that in the 1930s". 
While this is an exaggerated caricature, it does define a 
distinction between the ever-skeptic Europe (Eeyore) and the 
childishly ever-optimistic America (Winnie-the-Pooh).

Now, both kinds of voices are playing together on LISwiki. Google 
is favored by librarians, but Wikipedia is met with opinions.  It 
is inevitable that the two articles are compared, by readers 
trying to understand what librarians think.


-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se