Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. I think that that was a point that needed to be made and it will need to be made again in the future. I suspect you know or have figured out that I am a librarian. When I was at Drexel, in my basic reference course in library school, we had an exercise, as is common in reference course pedigogy, of finding answers to questions and citing the source. One question I answered with the source cited and the answer correct as far as the source having the information, but that excercise item was marked wrong because I had not used the most logical source, whatever that is. I have been fighting that kind of mentality in libraries ever since. The internet has made finding factual information so much faster and easier not to mention what databases have done to getting a starting bibliography for research for papers and presentation perparation research. I do not advocate using a tool like the Wikipedia as the core tool for serious research, but as a place to get a working understanding of concepts, stray facts or bits of information it is superb, and should be an acceptable source to cite for the better uses of the tool. I submit, also, that one of the core reasons for so much professorial down playing and bad mouthing of the Wikipedia, the Internet as an information resource is that so many college faculty are still clueless about the use of computers, the internet, databases and so forth. Your organization is aimed at elimination of the digital divide in the third world, among ethnic and racial minorities, with women and so forth. Have you ever considered that a significant percentage of college faculty and elementary and secondary school educators are prime candidates as a market for digital divide erradication. This will be a tough group as well as many are deacons and priests and ministers in the Holy Church of Un-Computer.
Sincerely, David Dillard Temple University (215) 204 - 4584 [EMAIL PROTECTED] <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/net-gold> <http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/ringleaders/davidd.html> <http://www.kovacs.com/medref-l/medref-l.html> <http://listserv.temple.edu/archives/net-gold.html> <http://www.LIFEofFlorida.org> World Business Community Advisor <http://www.WorldBusinessCommunity.org> On Sat, 22 Jan 2005, Andy Carvin wrote: > Thanks, David, I appreciate it. Despite what many critics say about > wikipedia, when it comes to Internet-related subjects like podcasting, > there are few, if any, resources that do a better job defining the > concept than wikipedia. It's often because the people involved in > developing the technologies then contribute to wikipedia as well. -ac > ps - Wikipedia creator Jimmy Wales spoke today at the Berkman > conference. In case you missed the live webcast, I've posted a podcast > on my mobcasting blog. http://mobcasting.blogspot.com ========================================= > David P. Dillard wrote: <snip> _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
