RE: Wikipedia?

["Rick Anderson" <rickand@unr.edu>]

> Well, I guess if people want to use Wikipedia OK -- each to his 
> own.  I still think it shows something of a slippage of 
> standards. And for those who think errors are OK -- well, fine

The idea that Wikipedia is somehow uniquely error-prone cracks me 
up. In libraries, we subscribe to newspapers as a matter of 
course, and when it comes to accuracy, I think the average 
Wikipedia entry would compare pretty favorably to the average 
news story.  We also buy books that are written by political 
hacks (across the political spectrum) and that we know perfectly 
well are filled with distortion and bias.  Are these resources 
full of errors?  Of course.  Do we use them anyway?  Yes, because 
a resource doesn't have to be perfect in order to be worth what 
it costs, or to fulfill a valuable educational purpose (comparing 
the fulminations of Al Franken and Dinesh D'Souza can be very 
instructive). If all our tools and resources had to be 
error-free, we'd have precious few tools and resources.

---
Rick Anderson
Dir. of Resource Acquisition
University of Nevada, Reno Libraries
(775) 682-5664
rickand@unr.edu