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@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.