LibraryTechtonics

Interesting idea: wikis as the future of “scholarly communication, review, and publishing”.

Disruptive Scholarship
[posted by Gerry Mckiernan on Asis-l 1 feb '05]

This is an academic librarian promoting the use of wiki’s as a future for scholarly writing, peer review, and open reader editing, as opposed to insular and independent “I’m important” academic publishing. So feh on Clay Sharky.

See, the problem that I have with Wikipedia as a librarian is that it’s too easily seen as an authoritative source as a *whole* by regular users, and I think there are librarians out there who would agree with me. Don’t get me wrong, Wikipedia is awesome on some levels, especially when it comes to tech stuff and geek culture (I consider “geek” a good word, remember, I *am* one), and when articles of any topic are well cited. And, well, authoring on the level of a collective consciousness, where everyone gets to contribute what they know, is very keen. However, in an age where information is becoming the new currency, and that currency is inflated by bad or not-so-great information, authority becomes the master of the InfoFed interest rate.

If everyone on Wikipedia cited their sources, and all of those sources were good sources, I’d be stoked. And if Wikipedia had a more even coverage of topics instead of being too heavy in select areas and light or empty everywhere else, I’d have no beef with Wikipedia at all. Wikipedia, depending on the article, can be just quick ready reference that needs backup or really hard core citable stuff. Some articles without citations are really very good, I just wished they cited their sources to make them better.

Have a look at the definition of “disruptive technology” Mckiernan quotes in his post to the listserv:

“[a] disruptive technology is a lower performance or less expensive product or process that gains a foothold in the low end, less demanding part of an existing market, and then successively moves up-market through performance improvements until finally displacing the market incumbents. Disruptive technologies are usually introduced to the market by small startup enterprises.”
Wikipedia, Disruptive Technology

Wikipedia will be even more disruptive if its supporters will cede that “performance improvements” need to be made in the ways of things like, say, better-substantiated articles to start. It has a ways to go before it can really displace market incumbents like Britannica and World Book, who I don’t see going out of business too soon, although I’ll grant Wikipedia has a leg up with being online and free. Mckiernan’s model for disruptive scholarship has real potential to be truly disruptive, maybe even disruptive enough to displace something like Google Scholar in the future, if I may be so bold, if academics and librarians take it seriously enough.

Tags: technology