Evaluating Collectively-Created Information Head for the Edge, January 2007
“The most valuable resource on the Internet is the collective intelligence of everyone who uses it.” James Surowiecki
As library media specialists, we have a special responsibility to see that our students learn to access the most relevant, most comprehensive and most accurate information possible. AASL/AECT’s Information Literacy Standards for Student Learning (1998) couldn’t be any clearer - Standard 2: The student who is information literate evaluates information critically and competently.
In the halcyon days prior to the Internet, teaching this aspect of information literacy was fairly straightforward. We might have had students ask: What are the author’s credentials? With what institution is he/she affiliated? What is the reputation of the company that published the author’s book or journal article? Or more than likely, we just didn’t spend a lot of time and effort teaching information evaluation skills, secure in the knowledge that the books and magazines to which our students had access had already been vetted – by us.
But of course, the Internet has given students access to, well, everything – accurate and inaccurate; timely and dated; biased and objective. As a result we’ve necessarily paid greater attention to information evaluation. The trouble is that we’ve only been having students ask the same questions to determine the reliability of information that we have in the past - basically, “Who is the author and what are her/his credentials?”
Like it or not, we are moving from a “read-only” Internet to one that is “read-write.” And this presents an entirely new class of information that needs to be evaluated – the collectively-created information source. For many of us who have been trained to put faith in traditional authoritative sources, collectively-created information seems, at best, suspect; at worst, horrifying. An encyclopedia anyone can edit? Book and movie reviews anyone can publish? Textbooks written by students? A library manual written by practicing librarians? (That sound you just heard was your old Reference I professor turning over in her grave.)
Without even being aware of it, I’ve personally come to reply on collectively-created information. I’ve long used TripAdvisor’s <tripadvisor.com> reviews when choosing a hotel or resort. It’s not that I distrust Frommers or Fodors, it’s just that the reviews on TripAdvisor are written by real people who have actually stayed in the accommodation recently. There are usually enough reviews that a single crank or enthusiast stands out from the general consensus. If nine of ten people rave about service, you can reliably count on good service. I’ve found the Digital Photography Review website <www.dpreview.com> to be a reliable guide to digital cameras for a non-professional user like myself. More of us are reading book reviews submitted to Amazon and movie reviews at Internet Movie Database. These vox populi sources may not supplant the New York Times Book Review or Roger Ebert’s columns, but they do complement them. And I often find myself in greater agreement with the populi than the professional critic.
Which gets us to the poster-child of collectively-created information sources, Wikipedia <wikipedia.org>. As an “information professional,” I don’t really want to admit that I use (and really like) Wikipedia. But I will defend its use for a number of reasons including the breadth of its scope, its timeliness, and its clear notification of controversial/undocumented entries.
We might, in fact, actually turn to Wikipedia as the model for reliable collaboratively-created information sources, and use some of its attributes to create a checklist that can be used to help determine the reliability of other such sites. How are these for starters?
Can anyone contribute or edit the source?
Is a history of changes made available?
Are a diversity of views, opinions, sources and voices evident?
Are there clear warnings that a topic may be controversial?
Is there a process by which those who are misusing the resource can be restricted from contributing?
New Yorker columnist James Surowiecki advances a theory he calls “the wisdom of crowds.” (The Wisdom of Crowds, Doubleday, 2004) He writes:
Under the right circumstances, groups are smarter, make better decisions and are better at solving problems than even the smartest people within them. On any one problem a few people may outperform the group. But over time collective wisdom is nearly impossible to beat. No one, you might say, knows more than everyone.
This is why, Surowiecki, surmises, that the audience on the television program Who Wants to be a Millionare? gets the right answer 91% of the time, compared to the “experts’” 65% accuracy rate.
Collectively-created information sources will grow in popularity and value. Wikis are allowing teachers to ask students to create their own textbooks. Joyce Valenza has challenged the library community to create the ultimate library manual at teacherlibrarianwiki <teacherlibrarianwiki.pbwiki.com>. Jimmy Wales, creater of Wikipedia, has announced that he is turning his attentions to establishing collaboratively-created college curricula at the Wikiversity <en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikiversity>
Are we teaching our students how to evaluate this new type of information?