Thing 15
This week’s Thing looked at Evaluating Information, specifically focusing on how we assess and consider Wikipedia. For convenience when writing this Thing I am focusing on my experience of Wikipedia within an academic setting and not in everyday life.
I use Wikipedia very frequently for looking up and checking all manner of everyday topics; however, within an academic setting I do not use it. Having just finished my MA last year and my BA the previous year I am quite use to lecturers warning students away from Wikipedia. This warning may have been in part due to the proliferation, especially among first year undergraduates, of looking up the topic of their essay and choosing the first couple of search results (which normally includes Wikipedia) and taking information from only those results. On the other hand lecturers may caution students because of inaccuracies, or the perception of inaccuracies, within Wikipedia articles. While the Q&A of this week’s Thing, between Dr. Rebecca O'Neill, Wikimedia Ireland Project Coordinator and Rudai 23 project team person Kris Meen, was very interesting and informative I am still hesitant about Wikipedia. I remember, about five years ago, an old acquaintance of mine saying that the Wikipedia article on the topic he was researching for his PhD was almost completely wrong. He was researching an old Celtic Saint (I cannot remember which one) so it was not a popular or well known topic that people would “hack” and write misinformation for the fun of it. At the time I took his word for it and never looked into it myself and now, given how long ago it was, I cannot remember the details of it to check. It may simply have been that the information on the Wikipedia was from a source that was later considered outdated or new information had come to light in the intervening years, and given the fact that the research that goes into a PhD is very detailed and thorough, often looking at primary sources that not everyone has access to, this may have highlighted these discrepancies.
Because I am not yet working the library and information services area I had not heard of ‘1lib1ref’ but I find the initiative be both intriguing and very important. I chose Task ‘b’ for this week’s Thing. I set up an account with Wikipedia and then used Citation Hunt to find a ‘citation needed’ where I could add a reference. The experience was unnerving and I struggled for quite some time to find a citation. I eventually managed to find two references for Catholic Church in Ireland. There were also three questions to answer for Thing 15.
How do you find your own evaluation skills?
I think my evaluation skills are ok, on subject that I am familiar with there are much better but for new subjects I find it much more difficult to evaluate the information I am given, I noticed this particularly during both my BA and MA.
Does needing to find rigorous information on your own help to put yourself in the shoes of people you might be helping in your work?
Yes, I think so. While not about LIS, I can relate this question to my part-time job, where learning about new products and relevant information them is very important when helping customers.
Does going through this kind of exercise make you feel better equipped to talk others through the need for a critical or evaluative approach to information -- and how one might take such an approach?
I’m not sure with this. I do think it is important to be critical or to evaluative information and I would certainly like to talk to and encourage others to do so, however, I feel this may become complicated depending on the subject matter, for example, information from a political party/group or a religious group, which may cause a ‘blinkered’ effect to evaluating the information.
Based solely on my experiences as a student in the last few years I think that while Wikipedia maybe, as Dr. O'Neill said in the Q&A a good “first port of call” I am reticent about Wikipedia becoming a more used source, while I do not think it would be a problem for postgraduates, for undergraduates, particularly first years, I believe the temptation to solely use Wikipedia and not investigate other sources of information maybe too great. This may be a personal bias of mine having just come through a BA and MA and been in lecturers and modules where there are students who want to do as little work as possible. Perhaps as Dr. O'Neill said Wikipedia could be used “as a tool to teach critical assessment skills”; beginning in Secondary school so that when students enter college the issues I outlined above would not be so prominent.
Overall, I found this Thing a little difficult and somewhat daunting but nonetheless very informative; while I still have my own hesitations I have learned a great deal about Wikipedia and will hopefully be able to continue with the ‘1lib1ref’ initiative.
