The argument about Wikipedia versus Britannica continues to rage in libraryland. The questions are about authority and the likelihood of outright deception, of course, and a recent round brought up the limitations of peer review as exemplified in the 1989 cold fusion controversy, where two scientists claimed to have achieved a nuclear fusion reaction at [...]

Posted January 5, 2006 by Casey Bisson
Categories: Libraries & Networked Information, Technology. Tags: authority, Britannica, cold fusion, controversy, encyclopeadia britannica, encyclopedia, encyclopedia britannica, encyclopedias, wikipedia. One Comment.

Fresh from Nature: a peer reveiw comparison of Wikipedia’s science coverage against Encyclopaedia Britannica:
One of the extraordinary stories of the Internet age is that of Wikipedia, a free online encyclopaedia that anyone can edit. This radical and rapidly growing publication, which includes close to 4 million entries, is now a much-used resource. But it is [...]

Posted December 14, 2005 by Casey Bisson
Categories: Libraries & Networked Information. Tags: Britannica, compare, comparison, Encyclopaedia Britannica, encyclopedia, head to head, journal, nature, peer review, quality, social software, thewisdom of the crowds, wikipedia, wisdom of crowds. One Comment.

Wikipedia seems to get mixed reviews in the academic world, but I don’t fully understand why. There are those that complain that they can’t trust the untamed masses with such an important task as writing and editing an encyclopedia, then there are others that say you can’t trust the experts with it either. For my [...]

Posted June 3, 2005 by Casey Bisson
Categories: Libraries & Networked Information. Tags: encyclopedia, integration, libraries, library of congress, networked information, Nikola Tesla, opac, wikipedia. 5 Comments.