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Is Wikipedia a good source? 2 college librarians explain when to use the online encyclopedia – and when to avoid it

Bridget Retzloff, Assistant Professor and Digital Pedagogy Librarian, University of Dayton and Katy Kelly, Professor of Marketing and Engagement, University of Dayton, The Conversation on

Published in Business News

What comes to mind when you think of Wikipedia?

Maybe you think of clicking link after link to learn about a topic, followed by another topic and then another. Or maybe you’ve heard a teacher or librarian tell you that what you read on Wikipedia isn’t reliable.

As research and instruction librarians, we know people have concerns about using Wikipedia in academic work. And yet, in interacting with undergraduate and graduate students doing various kinds of research, we also see how Wikipedia can be an important source for background information, topic development and locating further information.

Wikipedia, which launched in 2001 is a free online encyclopedia run by the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation and written collaboratively by its users.

There are 10 rules and five pillars for contributing to the site. The five pillars establish Wikipedia as a free online encyclopedia, with articles that are accurate and cite reliable sources, and editors – called Wikipedians – who avoid bias and treat one another with respect.

Policies and guidelines build upon the five pillars by establishing best practices for writing and editing on Wikipedia. Common issues that go against the guidelines, for example, include paid editing and vandalism, which refers to editing an article in an intentionally malicious, offensive or libelous way.

 

Here are what we see as the main pros and cons to college students using Wikipedia as a source of information in their research and assignments, though anyone can consider these tips when using Wikipedia.

1. Basic information on virtually any topic

In addition to being free and readily available, Wikipedia’s standardized article layout and hyperlinks to other articles enable readers to quickly track down the basics on their topic – the who, what, when, where and why.

In our experience, many students come to the library with a chosen topic – for example, voting rights during Reconstruction – but little knowledge about it. Before searching for the scholarly articles and books typically needed to complete their assignment, students benefit from knowing keywords and concepts related to their topic. This ensures they can try a variety of words and phrases in the catalog and databases as part of their search strategy.

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