Invasion of librarians spawns new WikiProject
Amid considerable debate among librarians about their experiences with Wikipedia, a new WikiProject to coordinate their efforts as Wikipedia contributors started last week. The project attracted additional discussion and a significant number of participants have already joined in.
The immediate impetus for the debate came from librarian-blogger Jenny Levine, who related her negative experience in trying to add an external link to a Wikipedia article about The Da Vinci Code, one that would allow readers to find libraries with a copy of the book. Comments on the subject spread to other blogs and mailing lists, and eventually a WikiProject for librarians was started by Peter Binkley last Monday.
In addition, Jeff Pomerantz, a library science professor at the University of North Carolina, had earlier posted some reflections on a presentation held at the school about Wikipedia. Pomerantz said the presentation changed his thinking on the subject when he realized that collaborative editing fundamentally resembles the academic peer review process. Observing that people will undoubtedly continue using Wikipedia, sometimes naively unaware of issues about its accuracy, he concluded that librarians have a "professional responsibility to make Wikipedia a reliable information source."