The history department of Vermont's Middlebury College decided to ban students from citing Wikipedia as a primary source in their papers for this spring semester. While AU advises students to take advantage of the library's resources for papers as alternatives to Wikipedia, many AU students use Wikipedia as a start-off point.
Middlebury made the decision after students continued to cite incorrect information from the Web site, Don Wyatt, a Chinese history and philosophy professor and chair of Middlebury's history department, said. While they do not want students to cite Wikipedia in their papers, Wyatt said they did not see a problem with students using it to guide their research, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.
"We decided that we didn't want to ban students from using a particular resource; we wanted them to be able to use it with greater discrimination and more discretion," Wyatt said in the Chronicle.
At AU, flyers around campus and Today at AU advertise the library's research workshops to students to teach them how to find information for class papers and projects.
Within the library staff, there is some debate about how Wikipedia should be used.
Anne Osterman, a reference/instruction librarian at AU, has more lenient beliefs on using Wikipedia.
"It is a good jumping-off point," Osterman said. "I use it to get a good overview on a subject, look at the sources listed on the article as opposed to the article itself, but I always tell students to not cite it in their papers."
She said citing Wikipedia is a danger because students sometimes do not recognize that as an open-edited encyclopedia, it is not always accurate.
Students have the option of instant messaging librarians to find information on a subject while doing research. Once through this service, a student asked Osterman about AU's history. The student had posted a page about AU onto Wikipedia and was double-checking the facts after he had posted the article. Osterman said cases like this showed how the people writing articles are not experts and might not even have all the facts in place.
Most AU students understand the dangers of using Wikipedia and avoid using it on research papers.
Kayla Bryant, a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences, said when she uses Wikipedia she scrolls down the page to the works cited to look at those sources instead.
While some say they use Wikipedia for its sources, others say they use it as a quick reference guide. They say they accept the limitations of Wikipedia in its inaccuracies and use it only for the basic material. Many users, such as Patricia Rogers, a senior in the School of Public Affairs, have also discovered Wikipedia does not have the depth required for heavy research.
"[Wikipedia]'s really good," Rogers said. "It gives the answer quick and gives good definitions. What I don't like is that it's not very detailed. But if you're trying to pull an all-nighter, it gives good answers."
For in-depth research, most students try to delve into the library's resources, including sets of various subject encyclopedias that Osterman said related specifically to a student's field. The only problem Bryant and her friend Kim Tu, a sophomore in CAS, said they found in the library was how outdated the books can be.
Despite this problem, they said they liked the library and were able to get a lot of work done in it. Tu said she prefers the Interlibrary Loan to compensate for outdated books and likes the availability of newspapers from other countries. Tu said she uses Wikipedia because her teaching assistant said it was OK.
Most AU students said they know the difference between quick, simple information and reliable information, and said they remain skeptical of the facts presented on Wikipedia and how they are obtained.
"I'd never cite it, but I'd use it as a jumping off point," said Robert Killip, a senior in SPA. "But considering I can edit Wikipedia and cite it ... I don't know, it seems wrong"
