Should students cite Wikipedia as a source?

There’s no doubt university students are turning more and more to Wikipedia as a resource for their assignments. Should we be discouraging them? At our library we have had some interesting discussions and wonder what advice we should give on Wikipedia usage.


I cited Wikipedia in assignments I did in my recent postgraduate studies in Education and was NOT marked down. I felt that as long as I had a majority of peer reviewed journals as references, one Wikipedia citation to explain a particular term, was acceptable.


None other than the National Library of Australia cites Wikipedia as an authority in a recent NLA Newsletter when they write about social networking websites.


When Jimmy Wales spoke in Perth in 2007 he answered some of the Wikipedia critics. See my blog post on the Jimmy Wales seminar at the time.


Lisa Spiro in her blog Digital Scholarship in the Humanities reports on a study she did of Wikipedia citations appearing in journal articles indexed by the high quality databases, Project Muse and JSTOR. Wikipedia citations are increasing. She also found that some leading humanities scholars were citing Wikipedia. Read all about it, and all the related comments in her blog post Is Wikipedia Becoming a Respectable Academic Resource?


There’s further discussion on this topic in the Open Education News blog post


What do you think? How reputable is Wikipedia?

Going slow day at the New Norcia Library Lecture

New Norcia is an absolute gem of a town, nestled in farming country north east of Perth. It is the only monastic town in Australia, dominated by the still functioning Benedictine Monastery

Each spring for the last decade or more the New Norcia Librarian, Sue Johnson, has organised and hosted the annual New Norcia Library Lecture.

I put myself in “go-slow” mode for the day and headed up there with work colleagues.
The 90 minute drive up from Perth passes through the citrus growing town of Bindoon, which is always worth a stop for mandarins in September. Another highlight is the spring wildflowers along the route, particularly the blue leschenaultias.

This year’s library lecture featured a keynote speaker from the British Library, Giles Mandelbrote, Curator of British and Early Printed Collections. The BL’s Early Printed Collections focus on British printed materials from 1501-1800.

Formerly the British Library's early collections were grown through the acquisition of private or institutional libraries and collections, such as the Old Royal Library and private library of Sir Hans Sloane. These days the items are largely acquired by highly selective acquisition of around 700 individual titles per year

Giles Mandelbrote has what many in the audience considered a dream job, visiting auction houses, such as Sothebys, and purchasing antiquarian books from catalogues or acquiring them by donation. He spoke of one recent acquisition with a high “wow factor” which has already attracted interest from international researchers, as it is the earliest exemplar of a British book of mathematics, printed in 1537.

The supporting speakers were all excellent: Julianne Simpson, Librarian, Wellcome Library of medical history in London; Barbara Patison, Collections Manager State Library of Western Australia; Grant Stone, Manager, Scholarly Resources Murdoch University.

Teaching Australian Literature web site

Austlit has announced the new Teaching Australian Literature web site. The site has been set up with funding from an Australian Learning and Teaching Council project. AustLit database and three Australian unis are involved: University of Tasmania, University of Queensland and UniSA.

"This site will evolve over the coming weeks, months and years to become a key resource for teachers of Australian literature in Australia and internationally. It will present information on the current state of teaching and research in Australian literary culture and invite participation in a range of activities and forums."

LibJamming at the WA Library Unconference

The WA Library Unconference LibJam session at the beginning of the day on 22 August, really set the scene.

The idea of the LibJam was to tell the group, in no more than 3 minutes, some ways that your library or you personally are "getting hands dirty"

Those who took up the challenge were:

* Murdoch University Library - web presence project
* Edith Cowan University - our learning 2.0 curve
* What happened since my last unconference - Hoi
* Curtin University Library - the story of a library blog
* SLWA Blog & wiki proliferation - any & all from SLWA
* Health Dept. - A Wiki as a collaborative tool in the Health Library network
* Water Corporation - promoting the library with a Library Toolbar

Here’s the ECU part:

Edith Cowan University - our learning 2.0 curve

"Beginning last year we decided to implement 23 things program for staff. At end of that year a number of staff had started but not finished. This year we ran 2 workshops on these types of technologies. We are now implementing the ECU Library blog, a Facebook page, using a wiki for training planning, producing more podcasts, Camtasia to enhance info lit program, putting up Youtube videos on how to use aspects of library, using Delicious to gather links, law librarian is part of a Ning group, now have a Google gadget for ECU catalogue search, using Google groups for post grad students, some staff have individual blogs, publishing article and presenting at conferences and seminars".

Alison took these notes while we spoke, and the audio of my bit for ECU, was recorded on the day and is linked from the Librarians Matter blog

Ozlit Blogs of note, my A list

In my day job as an arts and humanities librarian I’ve been gathering links to Australian literary blogs, so we can recommend some of these blogs to students and link to them from our library website.

Of course there is a wide range of literary blogs: blogs about Australian literature and writers, book reviewing blogs, newspaper literary blogs, writer’s blogs, group blogs, and blogs devoted to particular authors, or types of literature: poetry, young adult literature etc.

I have come up with my A list of the most influential Australian literary blogs.

Matilda, maintained by the indefatigable Perry Middlemiss. Perry should be your first port of call for the latest news on all aspects of Australian literature. He also posts regularly, so your RSS feed reader will pop up a constant supply of posts. Perry gathers together online literature sources from a wide range of sites. I’m currently enjoying his series of “Tim Winton Watch” posts, tracking the worldwide reception of this Western Australian writer's latest novel, “Breath”. Matilda blog has a Technorati authority* rating of 68. (More about Technorati authority below)

Sarsaparilla is a group blog covering Australian literature media and culture. This blog is:
“devoted to discussing books, writing, film and television, theatre and the performing arts, music, publishing, the humanities, reading, cultural studies, and… other things, from a distinctively Australian perspective “. The quality of the content is high and some of the Sarsaparilla bloggers maintain their own individual blogs or websites. The idea of a group blog has huge benefits as the posting load can be spread around. The Sarsaparilla blog's Technorati authority* rating is 47.

Kerryn Goldsworthy has several blogs including Australian Literature Diary which has a Technorati authority* rating of 11.

Kerryn taught literature at Melbourne University, is a former editor of Australian Book Review and a former member of the Literature Board of the Australia Council. She works now as a freelance writer and has written about blogging and community in the latest issue of Heat, published by giramondo publishing. Heat is not freely available online, so you will need to subscribe, or ask your library for a Document Delivery copy.

One of Kerryn other blogs, Pavlov's Cat, is a chatty blog which attracts a large amount of reader interaction and comments. Pavlov's Cat is “a mixture of political, cultural and personal observations, opinions and facts … about literature, movies, current events, ideas and anything that seems interesting at the time”. And yes, there's more than a few funny cat pictures there too. Pavlov's Cat has a Technorati authority* rating of 69.

Genevieve Tucker keeps a blog on writing and books: reeling and writhing and she also blogs for Sarsaparilla. Reeling and writhing is well set out and interesting reading. I've only recently discovered this blog, but am returning often now. In December 2006, in The Australian, Genevieve had an interesting article on book blogs: Online, everyone's a critic. Reeling and writhing has a Technorati authority* rating of 10. Check out Genevieve’s post here for a list of Australian literature blogs

Speakeasy is a blog for writing and publishing news, events and markets, published by the Australian Writer’s Marketplace for the Australian and New Zealand writing industry. Australian Writer’s Marketplace also put out the subscription database "AWM online" which ECU Library makes available for staff and students to use. Speakeasy's Technorati authority* rating is 7.

So what is Technorati authority all about, and who decides?

*Technorati is a site devoted to collecting and evaluating blogs and making them available for searching. They are tracking over 112.8 million blogs now.

Technorati assigns an “authority” number rating to blogs. But, you may wonder, how is this so called “authority” worked out? The “authority” rating is based on the number of blogs linking to your website/blog in the last six months. The higher the number, the more Technorati Authority the blog has. This is a typical "wisdom of the crowd", Web 2.0 measure of authority.

It’s noteworthy that the more serious blog of Kerryn Goldsworthy, Australian Literature Diary, has a lower Technorati rating than the more popular Pavlov's Cat. I guess this is because more people comment on and link to Pavlov's Cat and the blog really does create an online community. But we have put a link to Australian Literature Diary on our library website, as we think it is the more useful in the academic setting. However, Kerryn has not been too active on this blog lately.

My own blog, the JayGee library log, has a Technorati authority rating of just 2 :( Not many people linking in, yet....

Most of these Australian blogs have been archived by the National Library of Australia's Pandora digital archive which is a wonderful resource, preserving our online culture. Good on you NLA.

My literature links gathered for this post are stored on Delicious under my tag “literature” . I’ll post my B list soon.

I'd be pleased to hear of more literary/literature blogs to add to this list. If you disagree with my list let me know. What is your favourite Aussie lit blog and why?

My first meme

Here's a meme to have some fun with. Thanks Con!

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46.Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut.
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal.
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs highly over-rated IMHO
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette.
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill Squirrel
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict I was sick after...way too rich
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash my all time fave
88. Flowers
89. Horse yes in Holland. I've eaten camel too
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox ...had the bagel, also over-rated
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100 Snake

Playing with toys at the Perth Library UnConference

Prior to the day, local support for the 2nd Library 2.0 Unconference in Perth on August 22 2008, was overwhelming. We had to stop registrations at 100.

Library 2.0 and beyond: getting our hands dirty was the theme and some session notes are now appearing on the wiki.

For me the highlight was the "inspect a gadget" session and the chance to have a go with the Wii gaming. Sue said she should be taking commissions for the Wii. The bright green XO laptop, pictured above, also attracted some attention. Just shows there's a kid in all of us.

Being on the "unorganising committee" meant that I did a fair bit of running around and did not attend many sessions. But just talking to people around the traps I heard that the Yahoo Pipes mashups session was good. Our library staff were also interested in exploring the Library Toolbar ideas that some speakers covered.

Lutie Sheridan and I gave a presentation on Facebook and libraries and the Powerpoints are on my Slide Share account and here too

Facebook & Libraries 2008

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: unconfwalib08 library2.0)