When the internet was new-ish, many instructors were suspicious of it. Students were told to do their research, “but don’t use the internet,” and then were pretty upset when they got to the library and found out that the only way they could use the library catalogs was by using the internet!

Eventually we all got used to the internet. Then in 2001 Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org) showed up both on the web and in student work, and since then a simple little site has given many professors sleepless nights. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia about everything, written by anyone. There is more to it, but in the end, the problem most people have with it is one of authority, reliability and validity of the content and its authors. In fact, the creator of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, said that he would never recommend that a university student use Wikipedia as a source of information (“Wikipedia,” 2006). Many instructors forbid the use of Wikipedia as a cited source in papers and discourage its use.

Most search engines work by ranking the results based on popularity (defined in part by the number of pages linking to a page) and because of this nearly any web search turns up links to Wikipedia pages in its first page of results. In fact, some students have actually told me that it’s a struggle to find links that are not Wikipedia links! However, changes have been happening at Wikipedia to make it harder to change or vandalize entries and in a year or so, it might be very different than it is today. But for now, we have a tool that is both hard to ignore and nearly universally panned by the folks who hold grade books.

As a library director, I like to see students use the library, but I’m not losing any sleep trying to lure them back from Wikipedia. I think the use of Wikipedia can actually send students running back to the library, and for me, it’s not important where research starts, but where it ends up. When students figure out that some Wikipedia pages don’t cite their sources or seem to be a little too sure of facts that turn out to be false, the good student wises up in a hurry. When students tell me “I searched the web for three hours, but now I’m trying the library,” I don’t despair over those three hours. The student is now ready for the good stuff. The good stuff has not disappeared, and students can learn to recognize it—and I’m not too proud or too tired to help them do it, even if it means venturing into Wiki land.