Comments on: The Role of Wikipedia in Student Research http://stephenslighthouse.com/2010/03/18/the-role-of-wikipedia-in-student-research/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-role-of-wikipedia-in-student-research Stephen Abram's Posts About Library Land Mon, 21 May 2012 20:39:55 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 By: Heather Holmes, MLIS, AHIP http://stephenslighthouse.com/2010/03/18/the-role-of-wikipedia-in-student-research/comment-page-1/#comment-3089 Heather Holmes, MLIS, AHIP Thu, 18 Mar 2010 17:46:52 +0000 http://stephenslighthouse.com/?p=3658#comment-3089 I would agree that Wikipedia is an okay place to start. I use it myself on a regular basis. Where I run into trouble is when I'm teaching, since as a medical librarian my patrons are medical students and physicians (resident and attending). I often hear of them referencing Wikipedia to learn about a disease or condition and that gives me a lot of concern. Physicians have such limited time anyhow that it isn't unusual for them to use a quick reference resource (which also concerns me) without either investigating further on their own or (gasp!) consulting the library for assistance and confirmation of their preliminary findings. While I realize that physicians are a different audience than a freshman undergrad, I think it is imperative that we instill strong literature searching skills in our patrons as early as possible. That freshman will likely be a professional of some sort some day. Whether it be in medicine or law or whatever, I would rather be inconvenienced by having to wait a little longer for an answer than have my health care provider/lawyer/whoever reference Wikipedia (or something similar). The findings in this study are reassuring to some degree but I also think that it may be swayed by some degree by students answering the way they think the researchers wanted to hear rather than being honest. Those are just my thoughts though. I would agree that Wikipedia is an okay place to start. I use it myself on a regular basis. Where I run into trouble is when I’m teaching, since as a medical librarian my patrons are medical students and physicians (resident and attending). I often hear of them referencing Wikipedia to learn about a disease or condition and that gives me a lot of concern. Physicians have such limited time anyhow that it isn’t unusual for them to use a quick reference resource (which also concerns me) without either investigating further on their own or (gasp!) consulting the library for assistance and confirmation of their preliminary findings.

While I realize that physicians are a different audience than a freshman undergrad, I think it is imperative that we instill strong literature searching skills in our patrons as early as possible. That freshman will likely be a professional of some sort some day. Whether it be in medicine or law or whatever, I would rather be inconvenienced by having to wait a little longer for an answer than have my health care provider/lawyer/whoever reference Wikipedia (or something similar).

The findings in this study are reassuring to some degree but I also think that it may be swayed by some degree by students answering the way they think the researchers wanted to hear rather than being honest. Those are just my thoughts though.

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