Ramblings, citations and "brainwaves" of a college librarian in Toronto. 475 square feet refers to the size of my home, not the size of my office or library.
Wikipedia announced on March 1st 2006 that it had surpassed 1 million English entries. As you may have noticed I am a huge Wikipedia fan. The Wiki has explanations of words, concepts, technologies, etc. you cannot find anywhere else. The glocalized nature of the tome continues to astound me. Whether you want an entry on a local place, building, person, food or event, you often find an entry. Before Wikipedia, I had to search many different online search engines, encyclopedias and dictionaries for questions (Who, What, When, Where, Why, How, etc.) requiring basic explanations. In many cases, Wikipedia provides one stop shopping.
Granted there are information quality problems (accuracy, currency, vandalism, mischief, and public relations related editorial interference) plagiarism issues, and a bias towards referencing electronic works, but the 'pedia is "good enough" for many uses. If needed, I can use the Wiki entry to help me search (keywords) more authoritative sources.
Unlike other open access building projects, there is no core of experts doing peer review of entries (unlike the Digital Universe project). As long as you know that, you should be okay. Sometimes you can't find your hammer, and you grab something heavy and hard to bang down a nail. That's Wikipedia for me.
Granted there are information quality problems (accuracy, currency, vandalism, mischief, and public relations related editorial interference) plagiarism issues, and a bias towards referencing electronic works, but the 'pedia is "good enough" for many uses. If needed, I can use the Wiki entry to help me search (keywords) more authoritative sources.
Unlike other open access building projects, there is no core of experts doing peer review of entries (unlike the Digital Universe project). As long as you know that, you should be okay. Sometimes you can't find your hammer, and you grab something heavy and hard to bang down a nail. That's Wikipedia for me.
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