[Web4lib] Wikipedia

[Tim Spalding]

It seem to me that the concept of primary, secondary and tertiary
sources was always a shorthand and shortcut. Primary sources, even
autopsy, were never a guarantee of anything. And the lines between the
three easily blur.(1) These concepts are rather a stepping stone to
something bigger and more interesting, namely source criticism,
broadly defined.

Before Wikipedia and the web, few undergraduates outside of select
fields, like classics and maybe history(2), were expected to get too
deeply into these topics. But I think the Wikipedia, the web and
"mashup culture" generally has given students a baseline sensitivity
to source criticism, and a pressing need to be good at it.

Consider that, a decade ago, questions like "Who wrote this document?"
and "What are its biases?" used to be for historians alone. The rest
of us got our answers handed to us on a plate.

Now each of us is presented with exactly such questions every day,
when we read our email or browse the open web. And, I think, because
of this exposure, more students grasp what academics always knew--that
just because a book is printed, and some guy with a degree wrote it,
doesn't make it true.

So, I don't think scholars do themselves a favor by imposing on their
students a schematic conception of authority, especially one that was
never more than a shortcut. Students are aware, even if the professors
aren't, that Wikipedia is considerably better than any printed source
for some topics. (Unfortunately, these are mostly pop-culture topics!)

Do I think Wikipedia should be used by undergraduates? Sure. They
should check it out. They should check out even worse sources. But
they should approach it with their eyes open and their ears open. They
should approach any source that way, but especially this one!

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(1) Take something like the surviving accounts of Alexander the Great.
All were at least secondary sources when they were written, hundreds
of years after the event. One might even be termed a tertiary
source--a bad encyclopedia-length epitome of a secondary source. But
all are now "primary sources" because they are all that's left. Even
at the time the "primary sources" were in conversation with other
written sources, and contained a mix of dependent and independent
witness and of analysis.
(2) Here I'm being a little snarky. I majored and went on to graduate
work in both departments. History was much less concerned with issues
of method than classics.