[Web4lib] Wikipedia and the sources

[Nieves Gonzalez]

I think it is a very useful task for librarians. We have to write in
Wikipedia or modify those pages with information we know or have, because we
have enough and sure information to say and it is very important for the
people use Wikipedia and another wikis or applications that embed
information from Wikipedia.
By exemple, four years ago, I wrotte the biography of Joaquín González
Moreno, <http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joaqu%C3%ADn_Gonz%C3%A1lez_Moreno>local
historian of Seville, Spain. We knowed a lot about him because we were
Seville University librarians and knowed this life and publications, books
and articles about Seville and the south of Spain. We had a lot of problems
for keep the biography in Wikipedia, because nobody (wikipedia librarians)
seemed to know our personage. But, al the final moment, one person
(wikipedia librarian) from Argentina said our Spanish historian must keep in
Wikipedia because they (wikipedia librarians) didn't argue any problem with
football player or celebrity but they do with one historian that has writte
more than 40 books and 2000 articles.
Part of this information in Wikipedia was copied to
Sevillapedia<http://wikanda.sevillapedia.es/wiki/Joaqu%C3%ADn_Gonz%C3%A1lez_Moreno>(Wikanda,
the andalusian wiki).

------------------------------------------
Nieves González Fdez-Villavicencio
Biblioteca Universidad de Sevilla
nievesglez at gmail.com <%20nievesglez at gmail.com>
Blog: http://bibliotecarios2-0.blogspot.com
Chat: Skype: NievesGlez
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2009/1/7 Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se>

>
> 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)<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Berg_%28author%29>
>
> 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)<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gale_%28Cengage%29>
>
> 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
>
>
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> http://lists.webjunction.org/web4lib/
>
>


-- 
Nieves González Fdez-Villavicencio
Sección Apoyo Docencia e Investigación
Biblioteca Universidad de Sevilla (Spain)
Blog: http://bibliotecarios2-0.blogspot.com