[Foundation-l] WSJ on Wikipedia

[Ray Saintonge]

Michael Snow wrote:
> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>   
>> books are available for years the copy of
>> the day may be available in a library, but how about last years copy of the
>> WSJ ? Do you really think the WSJ can be found in every USA library ??
>>     
> I don't know about "every" library, but libraries are about more than 
> just books, and librarians are not unaware of the wonders of databases 
> in our modern digital age. For those of us that use libraries, I 
> encourage you to familiarize yourselves with the collections your 
> library may be able to provide access to online. I've certainly relied 
> on my library privileges for such sources many times in the course of 
> editing Wikipedia, particularly news archives (including the Wall Street 
> Journal).
>   
Of course you happen to live in the state that has the highest 
proportion of library use in the US! What has the state done right to 
encourage your expressed attitude?

It may at first seem that you and Gerard are speaking at cross 
purposes.  There are some serious epistemological questions that lie at 
the root of this discussion.  It's not just about the WSJ (which is a 
convenient example for this discussion), but about the entire question 
of how we store and retrieve knowledge.  How we pay for its production 
is only one issue among many.

The stack of paper 1-centimeter-thick WSJs accumulated over 120 years at 
five issues per week would be 300 metres high, (tall enough to be marked 
on a map as a hazard to aviation) with no guarantee that the oldest 
copies at the bottom of the stack would not have been so deteriorated by 
internal acids as to be unusable. With the advent on on-line publication 
we have no way of judging the stability of its much larger content, or 
of being assured that it has not been edited to suit updated policy. 
Maintaining an edit log is not a standard operating procedure for most 
sites.

Perhaps we do need to become more familiar with libraries, but perhaps 
too librarians need to be more pro-active in communicating the changing 
nature of their resource to the public.

Ec