I'm an academic, sort of, or future academic if you prefer (PhD student
in Comp. Sci., in the U.S.).
To be clear, I find LexisNexis, JSTOR, and other archives very valuable,
and I use them frequently. But there are a lot of pitfalls, especially
if you don't already know something about the subject you're searching
for. I certainly wouldn't recommend "search the databases" as a good
first step for an undergraduate trying to learn about a subject.
Wikipedia is sometimes (when the article isn't bad) a better first
resource, and textbooks and other encyclopedias (especially
subject-specific encyclopedias) are also good options. Then once
someone has learned a little bit about the subject, they know how to
decide which original journal articles or news articles to search for
and read, and how to interpret them in appropriate context.
I actually thought that's what this article was saying, from the
beginning part, but when it gets further towards the end of the article
it starts saying that the databases should be the first resource, with
Wikipedia used later to look up specific information---and that seems
exactly backwards.
-Mark
Frederick "FN" Noronha wrote:
Mark, very interesting comments. Just out of curiosity
-- are you an
information scientist, librarian, academic, or none of the above? :-)
FN
PS: I don't mean to be poking fun. Just curious to know how different
segments would see this issue. BTW, I'm a journalist, in India (Goa).
On 27/02/07, Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org> wrote:
> This seems strangely self-contradictory, although to be fair that might
> be the fault of the article writer instead of Ms. Matei's. It certainly
> isn't how I, or anyone else I know, uses or would recommend using
> Wikipedia. You resort to a paid professional *after* Wikipedia, not
> *before*. Wikipedia is particularly good as a first glance, giving you
> search terms you might not have heard of, pointeres to other related
> topics, and in good articles an overview of the subject. And I'd argue
> that unless people know what they're doing, a search of LexisNexis or
> ProQuest (or Google Scholar) is likely to be much worse than browsing
> the Wikipedia article as a first resource. A good Wikipedia article
> puts all these sources in context, and so is infinitely better than the
> raw listing of sources as a first reference. These databases are giant
> archives of primary sources, *not* generally reviewed, interrelated, or
> usefully commented upon. Honestly this part, especially with its focus
> on paid professionals and pay-access archives, strikes me as a bit of
> turf defense.
>
> The suggestions further down about how to spot potentially questionable
> Wikipedia articles are good ones, though.
>