On 12/17/06, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/15/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
I remember a post way back about what the Wikimedia Foundation should do in case it receives a large grant or donation. For the past few days I've been collecting data for a number of new articles, and I realized how lucky I am. A lot of people don't have access to things like Pubmed and LexisNexis and those are particularly useful in citing articles. Buying a set of books and making their contents available is nice, but still growing databases of information are more useful, especially now we should focus more on sources instead of new content as Jimbo said at the Wikimania conference. As soon as I finish my study, my access to those databases will cease to exist. I don't know the numbers, but perhaps a number of Wikipedians, say those in a referencing taskforce, should get access to such services with the help of the foundation...
Mgm
One note -- for those who don't know, PubMed (in a slightly less fancy version) is free! http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi it's pretty much *the* database to go to for medical research information, at least for English speakers. Agricola and Eric, for agriculture and education respectively, are also large U.S. government-produced databases and are also free: http://agricola.nal.usda.gov/ and http://www.eric.ed.gov/
Sadly, Lexis-Nexis and most other commercially-produced research databases are very very very unfree (and take up the bulk of your library's purchasing budget, generally).
I think trying to provide source access is a great side project for the foundation. However, there's a bit of a problem. Most databases like this are priced based on the size of the potential user base -- e.g., a school with 50,000 students will pay more than a school with 3000 students; a large law firm pays more than a small one. Now someone just has to figure out a good formula for the size of the potential user base for WMF-sponsored databases... (or a way to restrict the user base to a reasonable number) :) In the meantime, I and others with access will help when we can: [[Wikipedia:Newspapers and magazines request service]]
-- phoebe
And, of course, having access to a database doesn't necessarily provide access to the actual full-text of the article or paper itself, just the citation. Only a handful of databases are full-text, and they tend to not be the most specialized ones. Throwing our collective support behind open-access publications and initiatives is one way to go, but it doesn't solve the problem of getting contributors good sources *now.* I urge people again to take advantage of their libraries, and to make sure your library knows what you need as a researcher. -- phoebe