Wikipedia as a Reference Tool?
How could we avoid looking at Wikipedia - the mother of all wikis - during this section of our training? Wikipedia always stirs a lot of strong feeling from librarians when it is discussed as a reference source along side standard tolls like the World Almanac, Dictionary of American Biography or (gasp!) Encyclopedia Britannica.
First some “Wikinews” – The ten millionth article has been written on Wikipedia - a Hungarian biography of of 16th century painter Nicholas Hilliard (English version here ).
Those ten million articles have been written across 250 different languages, Wikipedia says. English is still the most popular language on Wikipedia, with 2.3 million articles (they reached 2 million English articles in September 2007). After English, the next most popular languages are German, French, Polish, Japanese, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish.
Click here for an article count by language. [TechCrunch]
Those ten million articles have been written across 250 different languages, Wikipedia says. English is still the most popular language on Wikipedia, with 2.3 million articles (they reached 2 million English articles in September 2007). After English, the next most popular languages are German, French, Polish, Japanese, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish.
Click here for an article count by language. [TechCrunch]
Check out a few articles - both scholarly and popular - about Wikipedia as a reference source (links to InfoTrac Power Search results).
What do you think? Have you used Wikipedia with success (or not) when helping a customer?
