Random Thoughts From Marybeth

Print vs. Pixels

Instapundit mentions a Dave Barry post about an article on blogging by Greg Hill (director of Fairbanks North Star Borough libraries) that begins:

Will Rogers noted in a New York Times article 80 years ago that "everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects." That seems even more true today.

The author goes on to prove this by misspelling Barry's name (Berry) and Dan Gillmor's name (Gilmour).

He also says, "Blog owners usually don't allow their readers to add their own comments, preferring their monologues to others' dialogues." I'm sure that some bloggers don't have comments open so that they don't have to hear any other opinions but their own but I would have guess that most of those who don't allow comments do so for other reasons - older software that didn't include a comment option or to avoid comment spam.

The writer of the article does have a point when he says,:

There are many credible blogs dealing with serious subjects, but most bloggers aren't experts. As the old computer maxim GIGO states, "garbage in, garbage out," and the person believing everything he reads--especially on blogs--is living dangerously indeed.

I agree, you can't believe everything you read. What I like about blogs is that the good ones link to sources and since I'm online already I can Google anything I read about for more information. Opinion articles in online newspapers seldom link to anything. Blogs are usually upfront about the author's biases while newspaper articles of any type more often pretend to have no bias.

After clearly establishing his bias against showing the unreliability of blogs, Hill moves on to the Wikipedia.

Librarians abhor using reference sources that don't have established credibility editorial rigor, and while Wikipedia is an interesting social experiment and "includes information more often associated with almanacs, gazetteers and specialist magazines," it's too untrustworthy to be used as a secondary source. I prefer the expensive and more reliable traditional encyclopedias for my research, for as Gabriel Biel, the German philosopher, put it 500 years ago: "You get what you pay for."

I spent a half hour or more trying to find a reference for the Biel quotation. I found one from a Web marketing company. Bartlett's, Webster's, and other references with "established credibility" don't list this as one of his quotations. Hill doesn't cite a reference.

I don't know if I would use Wikipedia as a primary source either but neither would I discount it just because it is free and isn't produced by a traditional encyclopedia. If people who devote part of their lives (as a career or hobby) to a subject don't know about it, why would a researcher with no real interest in the topic know more? Where do the researchers for those credible resources get their information if it isn't from specialists?

I remember reading once that the Encyclopedia Britannica (credible resource) didn't mention the airplane until decades after the Wright brothers flight. I don't know if that's true. What I do know is that after the invention of the Internet, printed resources will always lag behind online sources. Research may take the same amount of time but you can post information online before a publisher has even produced the first copy. Online resources can be edited immediately when new research or new discoveries are made. Print references are static.

The key to good research is finding multiple resources and evaluating their reliability. Rather than fighting or discrediting new technology, Mr. Hill's time would be better spent finding out how the librarians in his district could better help their patrons learn how to evaluate sources.