General and Specialized Encyclopedias

What is your opinion about established vs. free citizen-built encyclopedias such as Wikipedia? Consider how information environments are evolving and also think about the challenges for developing information literacy skills.

Prior to reading the article by Paula Berinstein Wikipedia and Britannica: The Kid's All Right (And So's the Old Man)I would have said out with the old and in with the new. Print encyclopedias seem highly outdated, our world is changing at a rate faster then seen in generations before. Information that use to take weeks to travel the globe travels in seconds thanks to the internet. It seems hard to believe that encyclopedias such as the Encyclopaedia Britannica have a place in the reference world, but it does along with its online counterpart Wikipedia.

Most people tend to first search for information online, it is true of the saying that information is at your finger tips. For any topic that you search for online using a search engine Wikipedia tends to be in the top ten results returned. The information is compiled from volunteers and the information is updated constantly. Realizing this fact and understanding this issue is what you need to take into consideration when relying solely on Wikipedia for information. When teaching students we need to let them know this and teach them about being media literate.

This is where Encyclopedias like Britannica have the foot up on their free online counterparts. Print encyclopedias entries are written by scholars in the subject area. The scholars are paid for their work and are considered area experts on the topic. Unlike Wikipedia authors which are anonymous print encyclopedia authors are recognized, this leads to authors being accountable for what they write. Wikipedia's authors are unmentioned so it can lead to people not caring what information they give is accurate or correct.

Reading the comments on the class discussion board many of the points I brought up here were also raised by my colleagues. Karin brought up a situation that highlighted how Wikipedia was in fact a better source for information then the print encyclopedia. When looking up information on a topic about a plant Karin found that the print encyclopedias did not contain much information, however after searching for information on Wikipedia Karin found pages of information and pictures of the plant. It just goes to show that print information can be either outdated quickly or not have the print space to provide detailed information. Electronically stored information can be only limited by the storage capacity which in some cases is limitless. This also brings up to mind the fact that print or user paid online encyclopedias are limited by how much money the have in their budget to pay for information. Whereas Wikipedia a volunteer site is relies on free information which means it can be constantly evolving with no cost to the host site for the information it provides.

This being said Wikipedia is free and you need to pay to read encyclopedia's such as Britannica. Who is going to pay for information that can be found online for free? If encyclopedias die out I would bet it will come down to dollars. It will be interesting to see what will happen in the next few years.