I asked LILAC Information Literacy Conference 2022 delegates what their favourite Wikipedia pages were and here’s what they answered:
- Boris Johnson (It’s not flattering)
- The Dyatlov Pass incident
- Dolly Parton
- Cellar door
- High five
- Mary Shelley
- Loch_Ness_Monster
- The Sopranos
- List of Manufacturing processes
- Disambiguation (disambiguation)
- List of The Simpsons guest stars
- Defenestrations of Prague
- Marxist economics
- List of Never Mind The Buzzcocks episodes
- The ABBA page
- Lists_of_films#By_genre
- Snapper (band) – the only Wikipedia entry I created as an assignment for Library qual.
- The one about the first women doctors in Edinburgh which only got added by Wikipedia after a protest at its absence. Edinburgh Seven.
- Toilet_paper_orientation
- Wolf Alice Band page
- Biographies i.e. person information pages
- As Slow As Possible
- A Cultural History of the Buttocks
- Narwhals
- Grey_Owl
- Cats_and_the_Internet
- Diggers
- N/a
- LILAC
- I don’t have one, sorry….
- All Wikipedia
Thanks all! Have fun reading these on your way home 🙂
Further links:
Our University of Edinburgh website with lots of ‘how to’ advice.
Changing the Way Stories Are Told – Chapter 13 in Wikipedia and Academic Libraries open access book.
- Citing Wikipedia advice
- Making an article
- Teaching with Wikipedia
- Wikipedia at 21 – quick facts about the largest open education resource in human history.
- Booklet of Case Studies of Wikipedia in UK education.
- Wikipedia and Academic Libraries
- YouTube channel
- Media Hopper channel
- Map of Accused Witches site
- Contact Wikimedia UK for advice getting started
- Attend our 60th monthly editing workshop – free, open to anyone and helps combat gender bias online through showing you how to edit and publish a new article on the lives and contributions of remarkable women missing from our search results.
Is Wikipedia part of the Information & Digital Literacy conversation/strategy at your institution? If yes, how? If not, why not?
LILAC answered:
“Often discouraged to use for university assignments but acknowledged as providing good research starting points with citations.”
“Not part of the overarching strategy, but we signpost to it as a resource for fact checking/evaluating source credibility in our information literacy workshops.”
“We do talk about it and we have moved away of being wikipedia-negative to Wikipedia aware. Its a good starting point.”
“Yes, we suggest Wikipedia as a starting point of researching ideas and concepts, but stress that it can be edited by anyone, and just as we expect citations in their work, we should expect the same from Wikipedia pages.”
“Yes, we use it as a way to demonstrate how peer review works, talk page is great!”
“I tell students that they can use Wikipedia as part of the research process (eg to ground knowledge or a jumping off point) but that their final assignments should cite stronger academic sources”
“In English schools there is now an acceptance students will use Wikipedia first but then are told not to reference it but find the original source.”
“Yes – decolonising articles on arts themes. Adding artists and practitioners of colour, who represent British diaspora, international artists in UK, etc. Also resources.”
“As a student, we’re still discouraged from using wikipedia as a resource, though I still use it outside of university”.
“Part of conversation I have with students in searches. Not in strategy. Also organising a Wikipedia editathon.”
“Yes, its a perfect example of applying information literacy in real life: both in creating articles and reading them.”
“Yes. I have delivered sessions on using wikipedia specifically to identify information gaps from underrepresented voices and using research skills to fill those gaps.”
“Not really, but if a student says they can’t use wiki I say that it’s not necessarily the worse and can be a v good start to begin to understand a topic”
“No, we tend to direct students towards scholarly material. Assumption is that Google/Instagram/Wikipedia already used extensively but are unfamiliar with specific library resources”
“No – but it’s something I personally talk to students about especially when it comes to reading up on background information, looking at lists of references, finding timelines, etc.”
“Often discouraged to use for university assignments but acknowledged as providing good research starting points with citations.”
“Yes – advise that it’s a good place to start but not for use as a reference.”
“We do talk about it and we have moved away of being wikipedia-negative to Wikipedia aware. Its a good starting point.”
“Yes, its a perfect example of applying information literacy in real life: both in creating articles and reading them.”
“Yes, we use it as a way to demonstrate how peer review works, talk page is great!”
“Yes. We use it in our first year info lit courses as an example of a place to go to learn background info, instigate their curiosity, and find additional sources.”
“It’s not, because it is not viewed as a reliable source.”
“No, academics are not interested”
“I tell students that they can use Wikipedia as part of the research process (eg to ground knowledge or a jumping off point) but that their final assignments should cite stronger academic sources”
“No …
Hmm why not? That’s a good question”
“Yes – using it to teach criticality and citation by getting students to edit Wikipedia”.
“Yes.”