Remember what it was like to put together a school report with only the encyclopedia volumes you could find on the shelves as resources? Right. Wikipedia, now a mature eighteen years old, has changed the landscape of research. But since its inception, there has been anxiety about the reliability of its citations. Wikipedia is currently running a campaign to encourage each librarian on Earth (they’ve always been ambitious) to add one citation each. You can even use JSTOR to add a source. Still, what are we to make of a user-edited source in a post-truth world?
Here are a few articles in JSTOR about Wikipedia:
- “Volunteers in Wikipedia: Why the Community Matters” examines what drives people to devote their time and expertise to maintaining this resource.
- “Wikipedia: Librarians’ Perspectives on Its Use as a Reference Source“ takes a look at what librarians really think of Wikipedia as a resource.
- “Wikipedia: Friend, Not Foe” puts forth the controversial proposal that some educators might actually want to use Wikipedia in the classroom.
- “Wikipedia Revisited” explores Wikipedia’s conflicting goals and how the site has grown.
All of these articles are available for free PDF download. Now go forth and cite!
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