Re: Second Life--game or virtual reality?

>
> A recent article in Times Higher Education (24 April 2008) reported
> that an experiment where libraries were asked a series of reference
> enquiries were answered less correctly in 2008 than in 1987, which was
> largely blamed on a reliance on Google and Wikipedia over authoritative
> reference resources.  Almost all libraries the libraries answered thet
> question, "What is the boiling point of ethanol?" incorrectly because
> they had referred to an erroneous figure given on Wikipedia.  A far
> better reference resource to use would have been the CRC Handbook of
> Chemistry and Physics, even though it is usually available only in
> print.
I didn't see the original of this TES report, but I have read of it (and 
might have it wrong). What worries me is that
1) Students expect or are expected to ring up the university library to 
ask about facts (rather than to ask where to look it up themselves).
2) The answer is given as "x degrees C", not as "x degrees C according 
to source y".
3) We are happy trusting the results of something that was printed in 
the British media. I would rather go with Wikipedia, which is where much 
of the British media gets its facts from anyway...

BTW, It would also worry me were students regularly consulting and 
citing Britannica for undergraduate work. I think too much of the 
emphasis on the Wikipedia debate centres on its wiki nature rather than 
its nature as a general encyclopedia.

Thomas Meehan

- 
Thomas Meehan
Head of Current Cataloguing
Library Services
University College London
Gower Street
London
WC1E 6BT

t.meehan@...

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