In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitchhiker's Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopaedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects.
First, it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words DON'T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
As I said in my introductory post on the main blog, I think Wikipedia is the best example of what the 'wisdom of crowds' can achieve. Say what you like about the merits or otherwise of the site, it can't be argued that it's very existence is hugely impressive. That that many people have contributed so much time and knowledge for free, and have produced such a vast repository of information that is all freely available, is just incredible and wonderful, I think. And by and large, Wikipedia is a fantastic resource. It works very hard to ensure that it is as error-free and neutral as any such project could be, and I think the onus has to be on users as well to recognise that Wikipedia should be used with caution. Like many 23ers I use it a lot, and to be honest for finding out basic information it's my first stop, even ahead of Google. I think the practice of warning students off Wikipedia is not helpful - as with so much on the web, you should be taught to understand the tool, not be blanket-banned from using it, and that's always the approach I would take. Interestingly the first person to tell me about Wikipedia was my tutor on the information skills module at library school! But for any serious research you should always double-check elsewhere - that's just good research practice, regardless.
I have rarely ventured into the world of Wikipedia editing though, for no other reason than that I rarely find an article I feel strongly that I could improve. Occasionally I find stubs or missing articles for something I do know a bit about, but it always seems too much effort at the time to write something then and there, and then of course I forget about it! For this Thing though I have made a couple of minor additions to the American Studies in Britain page, adding that Oxford now has the US Congressional Serial Set (one of our new eresources) and that we have the Early American Imprints too, which was listed as only at the BL, NLS and Cambridge.
