‘…The Britannica is great at being authoritative, edited, expensive, and monolithic. Wikipedia is great at being free, brawling, universal, and instantaneous’
Cory Doctorow(Via Fresh + New*)
Chances are that unless you have been living under a rock (or *gasp* living offline) you will have heard, by now, of Wikipedia. For those of you who haven’t, let me fill you in. Wikipedia is an online encyclopaedia notable for allowing its visitors to edit and create its content.
Like many, I have been in two minds about Wikipedia. On the one hand, the wealth of information is extraordinary, but on the other, there is always the question, which Mike Barnes, from the Guardian, asked last year, ‘Can you trust Wikipedia?’
The answer to this question will differ depending on what you are using Wikipedia for. It is likely that Wikipedia’s content will always have a question mark over it due to its open source nature. However, this does not mean that it is not useful. Within the museum industry, Wikipedia can be a great research tool, proving particularly useful as a starting point, providing excellent leads to other sources. For example, last week, I stumbled upon the online version of the Cyclopaedia Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, first published in 1728, whilst looking at Wikipedia’s entry for Colocynth .
In a paper presented at the Museums and the Web conference 2006, Jonathan Bowen and Jim Angus suggested that museums should think about creating their own entries on Wikipedia. They reason that this can enhance a museum’s online presence. Thankfully, for the less web-savvy among us, their paper helpfully provides a step-by-step guide on how to set up your museum’s Wikipedia entry, which they state ‘As a minimum…should include location information, a brief overview, correct categorization within Wikipedia and a link to the museum’s Web site’ (Bowen and Angus 2006).
Bowen and Angus also noted that as many museum professionals are specialists in an area, Wikipedia is a great way to share that knowledge with others. If the entry for ‘Museums’ is anything to go by, there are still gaps in Wikipedia, with the sections on museum ‘History’ and ‘Architecture’ very limited, as is another page on ‘Museology’.
So, give it a go!
*Seb Chan, at Fresh + New has posted a link to an interesting discussion about Wikipedia. |
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