Why no Wikipedia example

If your students want to know why they shouldn’t use Wikipedia, here’s a perfect example.  A college student deliberately inserted a fake quote into the Wikipedia page about a public figure who had just died – and the fake quote was included in many newspaper obituaries as if it was something said by the public figure. 

Kind of amazing when the quote was listed in Wikipedia without a link showing where it came from (usually a clue that the information may be bogus).  Only a few of the newspapers have apologized…  

Not just Wikipedia

You may have noticed your students using still more websites with Wiki somewhere in the title as sources in their research.  Like Wikipedia, these Wiki websites can be modified by anybody – in fact that’s the whole point – so I suspect we’re going to have to tell our students that any website with Wiki in the title cannot be used as a legitimate source for research. 

Wikis are intended to be modified by many people collaborating, and can be wonderful resources since many people are sharing ideas, but since anybody can change a Wiki, a Wiki really cannot be considered a valid research source.

Some research paper resources

                Grolier – subscription databases available only within SBS building.  The website is www.go.grolier.com.  Userid is stbernard, Password is dogs.  Grolier provides a number of research databases.   For more information, see Sue Thomson.

                Iconn.org – databases available anywhere in Connecticut (or outside of Connecticut with a library card from a public library in Connecticut).  Databases include New York Times and a number of other national newspapers, professional and popular journal articles, historical issues of newspapers, and other subject area reference materials.  For more information go to www.iconn.org, or see: http://franblo.edublogs.org/2008/07/03/using-great-internet-research-tool-iconn/.

                Why not Wikipedia?  Did you know that anybody – anybody – can make changes to Wikipedia pages?   Enough said.

                The SBS Style Manual is on Fred Smith’s and Art Lamoureux’s Edline pages.  (Login to Edline, then click on Classes, over on the upper right.  Scroll through until you see a class one of them teaches and click on the class title.  The Style Manual is among the documents at the right.) 

                An internet source that provides citations for bibliography/works cited in MLA format,  virtually identical to our Style Manual format, is www.citationmachine.net.  You select the type of resource (book, webpage, database accessed through a library, etc.) then fill in the blanks provided; the program generates the appropriate citation.   For further information, see http://franblo.edublogs.org/tag/citation-bibliography/.