Marriott Library Instruction Weblog

Banned Books Week

marriottinstruction — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 19:47:51 +0000

“Intellectual freedom can exist only where two essential conditions are met: first, that all individuals have the right to hold any belief on any subject and to convey their ideas in any form they deem appropriate; and second, that society makes an equal commitment to the right of unrestricted access to information and ideas regardless of the communication medium used, the content of the work, and the viewpoints of both the author and receiver of information. Freedom to express oneself through a chosen mode of communication . . . becomes virtually meaningless if access to that information is not protected. Intellectual freedom implies a circle, and that circle is broken if either freedom of expression or access to ideas is stifled.” (Intellectual Freedom Manual, 7th ed., American Library Association)

Each year, the American Library Association (ALA) celebrates Banned Books Week, coming up September 29 through October 6. If you’d like to pay a little homage to those writers who have the ability to challenge, offend, and inspire reflection in our culture, pick up a banned book. The ALA has compiled this list of the 100 most frequently challenged books, 1990-2000, or you can check out a bigger, more illustrious list of banned titles at Wikipedia.

Wikipedia Knows

marriottinstruction — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 19:08:17 +0000

(www.toothpastefordinner.com)

Okay, so that comic doesn’t totally represent my feelings about Wikipedia. (They’re a little more nuanced than that.) But it does capture how strongly people feel about the site. There seems to be a pretty clear-cut dichotomy with Wikipedia: you either love it, or you hate it. “Seems” is the operative word, however, at least for librarians.

So, let’s say I’m a librarian (I am!), and let’s also say that I’m interested in learning more about something like Art Nouveau, or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Wikipedia is very likely going to be one of the first places I look. Because it’s an encyclopedia, I recognize that I’ll be able to find some good introductory material about any of those topics which will help me to establish a basic understanding. I also know that, while Wikipedia is developed collaboratively by a community of “average Joe” contributors, a lot those people genuinely want to provide accurate, authoritative, unbiased information. So, how do they accomplish that goal or, at least, attempt to accomplish it? Contributors check facts, review citations, and flag suspicious content; they uphold Wikipedia’s publication policies and guidelines; they serve as editors as well as writers.

Well, that sounds like a good setup. However, the difficulty with it is that there aren’t enough people involved who are willing or qualified or capable of playing content watchdogs and fact checkers. Most information that is published on Wikipedia is not checked for accuracy by another contributor. And, as it has been well-documented in the media, contributors can easily falsify their credentials and their sources. The system is not 100% reliable. (Anyone disagree with me?)

The whole purpose of Wikipedia is to produce reference information through a voluntary social network–which is a really cool social phenomenon–except that there’s no effective way to ensure that entries are created and edited using the same criteria that scholarly publications use.

So, what do you do with Wikipedia? Well, I use it for non-academic research needs, and I evaluate what I find. I fall very clearly into the I-love-Wikipedia category, so I can’t say, “Don’t use it.” But I will say, “Use your critical thinking skills when you do.”

~ Adriana

In with the New

marriottinstruction — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 15:23:50 +0000

The Instruction Division would like to welcome students, faculty, staff, and friends of the Marriott Library to our new blog. Having the opportunity to interact with a diverse group of library users throughout the academic year–both in the classroom and in one-on-one consultations–we’ve found that there are a lot of questions and conversations about library services, resources, events, and even the library building itself. And if you’ve had a chance to participate in library instruction, you probably realized, too, that the old stereotype of the shushing, hair-in-a-bun librarian couldn’t be more inaccurate. We’ve got a lot to talk about.

The Instruction Division librarians, Linda, Sarah, Crystal, and I (Adriana), will be making posts on a pretty regular basis to share our thoughts about what’s going on in Library Land, to explore ideas about new technologies, to discuss news items, and to answer interesting user questions. So, drop by sometime and chat. We welcome your comments, questions, stories, complaints, anything.

~ Adriana