Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Wikipedia and Information Literacy

What is information literacy? Cite ACRL or AASL standards all you want, but for many teachers and librarians, the definition is secretly, "Teach kids not to use Wikipedia."

Some level of concern is certainly warranted. After all, when dinosaurs in a webcomic point out credibility issues with this particular source, it may be wise to consider broadening one's horizons. But Wikipedia is far from the only source that has ever provided inaccurate information. Actually, it has become far more transparent about how accurate its information is, noting when a section of an article needs additional footnotes or clarification, or when it may not be grammatical or objective. Wikipedia arguably forces people to question where information comes from and think critically about it in a way that traditional encyclopedias do not. So why has it become the shibboleth for declining information literacy skills?

A great deal of the backlash against Wikipedia has to do with assumptions about what information is the most useful, reliable, and important. The academic community in particular still privileges print, the individual, and "the expert." It values being able to trace an idea, expressed in written language in a stable form, back to its source: the individual who worked hard to become an expert in that field. Plagiarism is the greatest sin, a form of identity theft--blurring one's own thoughts and ideas with those of another individual or assuming the individual's intellectual identity outright. The stability of print allows the individual to claim the right to his or her ideas and oust the pretender. Naturally, an environment with these ideals and norms would look with suspicion on a Web-based encyclopedia that is constantly changing and lets anybody--anybody!--contribute to it in a collective fashion. Why, you have no idea who said what, or when, or if they had the proper qualifications... It can't be authoritative if there's no source of authority!

Ironically, this distrust may be the perfect seed for growing critical thinking skills. But for students, the distrust may expand outward to more hallowed institutions. What makes a person who writes a book more of an expert than a person who writes a blog? True, the former may benefit from editorial oversight, but the latter has to face the immediate, public responses to a post, many of which can be critical and force the writer to elaborate on or correct the original post. It is misguided to say that one form is inherently more "authoritative" than the other. But it is perfectly acceptable to ask students to consider where the information comes from, how it was created, who created it, the benefits and limitations of its particular form, and whether it all adds up to something appropriate to use to solve an information need in the current context. Should you cite a Wikipedia article on The Sound and the Fury in a literary research paper? Of course not. Is it a good place to start if you're going on a date with a Faulkner buff in half an hour and you don't want to sound stupid? Well, why not? And who's to say which information need was more important in the long run?

8 comments:

  1. I love the point you make about the fact that for wikis/blogs the public can respond immediately. Print publications have far fewer editors reviewing them than say a wiki/blog has public viewers. This isn’t to say print editors are inferior to the masses—they’re experts in their field. But there is some value in simply tossing loads and loads of people at a problem; it might not be elegant, but it can work.

    I'm all for using Wikipedia (which we call WikiGod around our house) for basic introductions to subjects and to possibly find actual sources (footnotes at the bottom of the pages can be informative). It does remain a problem, however, that students who should know better are still citing Wikipedia in academic papers.

    Dare I say that librarians should treat Wikipedia as some moderate parents approach sex ed? We can't say completely abstain, because then students don't know what they're up against and can't make informed decisions. Likewise, we can't tell them just to have at it because they’re likely to get hurt, or at least their grades are. Perhaps we need a slogan about using "protection" when viewing Wikipedia. Essentially, that "protection" needs to be IL skills that help students find, evaluate and use the information they view in Wikipedia.

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  2. Yes, you can say that a blog doesn't have a "peer-review" process...but that depends, doesn't it, on your definition of "peers"? On some level, one wants to differentiate between experts in the field and the type of people who leave YouTube comments, but many people in the middle range can actually be quite thoughtful and have interesting things to say. Assuming everyone comes in a spirit of inquiry, there can be a much broader range of ideas expressed.

    LOL at your sex ed analogy... "You should only use Wikipedia with someone you love." ;-D

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  3. I certainly appreciate ‘the stay away from Wikipedia’ sentiment. I just automatically told my adjunct government students to avoid Wikipedia full stop. It was just an automatic reflex to steer students away from Wikipedia because as a source, it is totally unreliable and inaccurate. But you make a great point about the demos inherent in Wikipedia and the opportunity it gives for being a more critical consumer of information. Wikipedia is a good example of the tensions between networks and hierarchies that Alex Wright astutely addresses in his book Glut. Wright points out a common belief that “the rise of the Internet signals the permanent disruption of old institutional bureaucracies and the birth of a new, enlightened age of individual expression...”(Wright, 2007). This rather utopian view comports with your discussion about what constitutes an authority, the writer of a book or the public response to a post.


    Wright, A. (2007). Glut. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

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  4. Huzzah!! What a terrific conversation. I like your discussion at the end about a user's purpose in using Wikipedia--great for crib notes for a first date, not terrific for a research paper. (Though, as Kimberly notes, trolling through the footnotes can be an excellent place to get started.) The teacher-librarian that I'm working with has used the same analogy with her high school students. It seems way more effective (and realistic) than those who make it out to be the devil, which it just isn't.

    Side note: Interesting to note that MSN Encarta is now defunct while Wikipedia thrives. That says so much about private vs. collective efforts, the human instinct to participate.

    p.s. It's partially the curmudgeon in me that wrote about a worst-case-scenario of the use of biased & inaccurate information found on the web. I figured you could definitely handle it and might even enjoy talking about the other side of the coin. I hope I was right!!

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  5. Hello all! Yes, I admit to starting much of my own research on Wikipedia myself, but I take what I read with a grain of salt. I have to recheck the sources to be certain I'm on the right path. I guess I use protection!

    I listened to the book The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch who described being asked to write an entry for the World Book Encyclopedia about Virtual Reality. After it was submitted, he was surprised that no one double-checked his entry. He said that he could have written a bunch of fake information and it would have been accepted. Pausch said that after this, he realized that Wikipedia would be a perfectly legitimate source, since at least peers review it.

    It seems to me that all of this talk about evaluating sources will make students of today more skeptical of the information they find. I kindof long for the simplicity of having absolute faith in what I read in college! But on the other hand, that kind of acceptance isn't literacy any more. The ideal is that kids are learning to be more discerning in what they accept as legitimate information.

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  6. @ Kathleen: I agree that many people have a fundamental drive to participate in the process of learning and knowledge creation. I still get a bit thrown whenever one of my friends casually mentions having edited a Wikipedia entry. The Internet has created a flattened atmosphere where more people can be seen as knowledgeable or famous, because they can promote their ideas and share their knowledge without editorial intermediaries.

    I definitely sympathize with your curmudgeonly instincts sometimes. But biased information can be everywhere: in a book, on TV, on the Web, and in the words of your trusted friends and advisers.

    @ Casandria: "I kindof long for the simplicity of having absolute faith in what I read in college! But on the other hand, that kind of acceptance isn't literacy any more." Right on the money! Arguably, it never was literacy, but with the multiplicity of ideas out there now, there's absolutely no excuse to blindly accept any one idea without question.

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  7. Apparently, the Internet ate evole's post, so here it is again:

    I certainly appreciate ‘the stay away from Wikipedia’ sentiment. I just automatically told my adjunct government students to avoid Wikipedia full stop. It was just an automatic reflex to steer students away from Wikipedia because as a source, it is totally unreliable and inaccurate. But you make a great point about the demos inherent in Wikipedia and the opportunity it gives for being a more critical consumer of information. Wikipedia is a good example of the tensions between networks and hierarchies that Alex Wright astutely addresses in his book Glut. Wright points out a common belief that “the rise of the Internet signals the permanent disruption of old institutional bureaucracies and the birth of a new, enlightened age of individual expression...”(Wright, 2007). This rather utopian view comports with your discussion about what constitutes an authority, the writer of a book or the public response to a post.


    Wright, A. (2007). Glut. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

    My response: I don't think Wikipedia's inherently inaccurate (although it certainly can be at times). Given its scope and how many people are editing at any given time, of course there will be mistakes. It is more likely that a mistake will slip in through the cracks. But on the flip side, it's also more likely that the mistake will be caught and corrected more quickly.

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  8. Sometimes I don't feel the need to comment because the dialogue is rich enough without me - this is one of those times!

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