No subject

We teach librarians how to evaluate sources, and how to teach
the students they will help how to evaluate.

For many years we've been
teaching how to evaluate web sources, and both students and
librarians have gotten fairly good at it.  It's even easier to
teach how to evaluate & use WP: paid advertising is not prominent
among the results, and a good deal of material present on the
web is filtered out: if you enter a city name you will not get
airline schedules, weather forecasts, and hotel advertisements.
Even the biases are more likely to be out in the open, and you
can check them by looking at related articles. At a more advanced
level, the edit histories make very good teaching examples.

What students (including library school students) are weak
at is evaluating print sources.

The material you linked to is about as good a statement as
I have seen. I would have emphasized even more the
use of WP as a starting point, and the use of external
links. WP is not primarily a web directory, but it is a useful
web directory nevertheless.

On 1/16/07, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> All,
>
> I received a message (below) from a librarian at a US high school who is
> considering writing a policy for their students regarding the use of
> Wikipedia in research papers. She asked for my input and whether I knew of
> any similar policies in schools -- either middle and high schools or
> colleges and universities. This:
> http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/lists_archive/Humanist/v20/0080.html
> is the kind of thing she's interested in  (this particular policy appears,
> by the way, to be completely sensible -- the main flaws I found were they
> missed the permanent link and citation features, and they called us "the
> world's blog").
>
> I pointed her towards
> * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Schools_FAQ
> * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_Wikipedia
> * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Researching_with_Wikipedia, and
> * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Academic_use
>
> which seem to be en:'s documentation on the subject of academic use. But I'm
> wondering if any of you:
>
> * know of such policies at specific institutions (and if so if you can send
> me a link)
> * know of commentary on, or a list of, such policies (either from our lists
> & sites or other places)
> * have comments about such policies and what should go into them.
> * if any of you are librarians or professors, if you have answers for the
> last question about how WP is handled at reference desks and in classes.
>
> Thanks!
> phoebe (brassratgirl)
>
> here's the message (with specific campus names taken out):
>
> >I am the head librarian at a college prep high school in California. We are
>
> >considering writing a school policy regarding the use of Wikipedia in
> >academic research. I am gathering as much information as I can from
> >universities because I would like our policy and instruction to reflect
> what
> >our students will be met with once they leave us.
> >
> >  Does the University of California have a policy about the use of
> Wikipedia or do professors to
> >set guidelines for its use?
> >
> >  In your opinion, based on your experience at various universities, are
> students allowed to cite it in academic research papers?
> >
> >  Do professors address it at all and how is it handled at the reference
> desk at university libraries.
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>


-- 
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.