[Web4lib] Wikipedia and the sources

[Lars Aronsson]

Back in August 2007 I stumbled upon some information about 
American writer Elizabeth Berg and wrote a short biographic 
article in Wikipedia.  It's not long or very good, but not 
completely bad either.  It provides just a little more information 
than you typically find on a book cover.  I think this kind of 
article can be useful to someone who found her books and wanted to 
know some more.

This was just the time when Wikipedia raised its requirements for 
articles. Pretty soon, the article was decorated with a little box 
complaining that it doesn't properly cite sources.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Berg_(author)

Apparently this writer had two of her titles picked for the "ALA 
best books for young adults" (in 1993 and 1997). She also received 
a "New England Books Award" in 1997.  But back when I wrote my 
article, I couldn't find good sources for these claims.  Now I 
found websites of the ALA and NEIBA, but only for the 1997 events.  
The nominations before 1996 are still not on ALA's website.

Wikipedia's article about the American Library Association has a 
short section on awards, which is also an improvement over 2007.  
The winners of some awards are listed.  This is not just for
curiosity, it also helps writers of author biographies to "prove" 
to other Wikipedia administrators that these authors are for real.

I think librarians could help Wikipedia enormously by writing 
basic articles about standard reference works, book awards and 
other things that can serve as sources to cite.  For example, have 
a look in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Encyclopedias
or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Reference_works
and see if your favorite reference work is adequately described.

Every U.S. university library I walked into (ten years ago, at 
least) would have shelves full of "Contemporary Authors". Today I 
guess the online version is used. Still, this reference title from 
Gale doesn't have an article in Wikipedia. If the Elizabeth Berg 
article would cite CA as a source (I don't have access, so I don't 
know if she's in there), another Wikipedian might think I'm 
bluffing.  It's not even mentioned in the article about Gale,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gale_(Cengage)

The other day, I found an article about a Swedish person was 
proposed for deletion because it only cited unreliable sources.  
The cited source was a major Swedish newspaper, but the article 
about this newspaper labeled it as "a tabloid", and Wikipedia's 
article about tabloids say these are unreliable gossip papers.  
Now, we have different definitions of what "a tabloid" is, and 
they are not the same in all countries.  After I provided some 
more information about this Swedish newspaper and its history, the 
deletion proposal was withdrawn because now the same cited source 
appeared to be more reliable.


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