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I'm currently reading Nicholson Baker's forthcoming book Human Smoke (excellent so far, but I've really only just begun it), so it was with particular interest that I took a glance at his new essay, "The Charms of Wikipedia", in The New York Review of Books. I intended to set it aside for later reading, but it was quite engaging, and I'm a big fan of Wikipedia, so before long I found myself completely engrossed. And often laughing:

This is a reference book that can suddenly go nasty on you. Who knows whether, when you look up Harvard's one-time warrior-president, James Bryant Conant, you're going to get a bland, evenhanded article about him, or whether the whole page will read (as it did for seventeen minutes on April 26, 2006): "HES A BIG STUPID HEAD." James Conant was, after all, in some important ways, a big stupid head. He was studiously anti-Semitic, a strong believer in wonder-weapons—a man who was quite as happy figuring out new ways to kill people as he was administering a great university. Without the kooks and the insulters and the spray-can taggers, Wikipedia would just be the most useful encyclopedia ever made. Instead it's a fast-paced game of paintball.

Not only does Wikipedia need its vandals—up to a point—the vandals need an orderly Wikipedia, too. Without order, their culture-jamming lacks a context. If Wikipedia were rendered entirely chaotic and obscene, there would be no joy in, for example, replacing some of the article on Archimedes with this:

Archimedes is dead.

He died.

Other people will also die.

All hail chickens.

The Power Rangers say "Hi"

The End.

Even the interesting article on culture jamming has been hit a few times: "Culture jamming," it said in May 2007, "is the act of jamming tons of cultures into 1 extremely hot room."

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There's a lively debate about information literacy and critical evaluation skills over at The Wired Campus today. Apparently a British professor is expected to ban students from using Google or Wikipedia in her course.
The post compares Google to "white bread for the mind."

What does everyone think about that statement? I loathe the idea that I'm feeding my brain white bread. (Who eats white bread anymore, anyhow?) But I also usually turn to Google/Yahoo for my first attempt at solving an information need. Now, I am almost never doing academic research, and perhaps there is the difference. I guess it is simply a question of using the right tool for the right use. Because surely these search engines/wikis are simply tools to be used at appropriate times, I agree with eFoundations.

At the risk of sounding like Andy Rooney here (who is forever on my black list because he dissed librarians), it reminds me of my theory that people who shop exclusively at Wal-Mart are statistically predisposed to have a lower quality of life. I have this theory because almost nothing in Wal-Mart seems to be made with attention to detail, design or beauty. It is all about function and price. And sometimes as a consumer, all you care about is function and price.

But other times you are willing to spend the money for high-style Italian leather sofas. But if you only shop at Wal-Mart to the exclusion of all else, you have no hope of ever even seeing the beautiful sofa because you mistakenly think the only universe available to you is what is on aisle 10.

As a shopper, you need to know there are times for Wal-Mart and there are times for Roche Bobois. And plenty of times for something in between. The same might go for information literacy? Or is it too crass a comparison.

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On my fridge I have a photocopy of a letter that Sandy Berman sent to the Library of Congress this August suggesting that they establish dildoes as a LCSH. I got many fascinating photocopies along with it for supporting evidence. I enjoy being on Sandy’s mailing list. Today, vickiep from del.ico.us sent me a link to “strap-on sex” as a new Library of Congress subject heading. Hooray! Unfortunately, links that go into the Library of Congress Authorities searches aren’t permanent but I was able to replicate the search and find the listing for dildoes in the weekly list for September 26th. Of interest to me particularly is that the authority record for strap-on sex contains Wikipedia, Google and “LC database” as notes in the 670 field. update: Tim at LibraryThing has a post showing the record.

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How many plots are there? A million or perhaps two or even one.

For a long time, I've heard that there were 36 plots enumerated in an old book called the 36 Dramatic Situations. Well, now you can see them, courtesy of Wikipedia.

Only now that I can see them, I wonder how useful they are Have any of you ever used them? Perhaps there is more in the book.

Here are some examples:
10 Abduction - an Abductor; the Abducted; a Guardian
11 The enigma - an Interrogator; a Seeker; a Problem





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How do you use the Internet to research your work?

I've spent the last month carefully sifting through Wikipedia entries by date--if you type in any month, day, or year in history, that magnificent research engine will give you a timeline of the news and events.

I can't tell you how invaluable that process is for reconstructing a certain time period for my novel. Wikipedia gives me research leads so I can track down the news stories, fashions, and popular culture artifacts from the time period I'm trying to reproduce.

Today, BookNinja (who is on fire today, three super-useful posts in a row) pointed out a Guardian blogger and novelist who noticed that this hyperlinked history lesson could be hurting his writing style. Do you agree with Ben Myers?

Dig it: 

"The days of laborious research to produce credible fiction are disappearing. More and more, writers simpley click a link, skim-read an article, and extract the (questionable) facts. Clearly there is an argument then that far from keeping us informed and up to date, the internet and sites such as Wikipedia are in fact making writers lazy, unconvincing and inaccurate. I hope I'm not one of them."

 

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It’s been a busy week this week. I had eight people come to computer drop-in time on Tuesday which was a tech frenzy of PayPal and email and inserting graphics and Yahoo mail address books. I’ve had a few of these links hanging around for a while waiting to find time to write proper posts, but I figured I’ll drop them in here. I see a lot of blogging as playing hot potato with a bunch of web content. You find it, you pass it on, the next person passes it on. The more content you shift, the easier it is to quickly ascertain which things you need to save for longer perusal and which need to just get passed on for the next person. I’ve read and absorbed these and thought you might like them.

• The Hollywood Librarian movie is premiering at ALA in DC this Summer on June 22nd. Ann Seidl has a clip available on YouTube, and one of my signs is in it. [thanks jacqui]
• Big congrats to Amanda for the launch of the Endeca powered catalog at her place of work. Look how fancy!
• Casey posts some stats about Wikipedia from what Pew is telling us(pdf). You can ban it or block it but people are using it. So what do we do?
• One of the most favorited posts from MetaFilter this week is the Things Found In Books post
• T. Scott is one of the many folks who have been reflecting on the idea that younger librarians have some time period of “dues paying” they must go through before getting their ideas heard and possibly implemented. This was the main thing that kept me from seriously considering running for Council again. Good long post and some great comments as well.
• Don Wood’s Library 2.0 blog is consistently a good read. This is a slightly older post about a great partnership. MySpace is teaming up with the Illinois Library Association to promote online safety. What a good idea.

ala, casey, donwood, endeca, hollywoodlibrarian, pew, socialsoftware, tscott, wikipedia

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One of the things that the 2.0 crowd needs to remember, myself included, is that by writing about all this neat stuff on our blogs we’re still just talking to an elite sliver of already-savvy people. I like to get my 2.0 talking appearing in print as much as possible, that seems to really have an effect on a whole new group of people.

When my 80+ year old neighbor called me today to say that she saw me in the newspaper talking about Wikipedia, I’m pretty sure it was the first time she’d ever said the word out loud. The article is pretty lousy to read online (I’m not sure what happend to the paragraph breaks) but I’m going to go walk down to the corner store and get a copy. Here are some of the pull quotes I’m happy with, in case you don’t want to slog through it.

Another prolific Vermont Wikipedian is Jessamyn West, 38, who works in the library at the Randolph Technical Career Center. She transformed from a Wikipedia user to a contributor two years ago, after visiting the Old Stone House Museum in Brownington. “I went to Wikipedia, and saw that their entry for Brownington didn’t include this massive stone building. I thought, I should find the information and put it on there so other people can find it and learn about it,” she explains. Since then, she says, as she scrolls through a long list of her contributions, she’s made “a couple thousand edits.” [note, it’s less than I estimated]

Her mission last winter was to figure out which Vermont towns had official town Web pages, and making all those links available. Today, thanks to her efforts, visitors to Wikipedia entries on Clarendon, Bethel and dozens of other Vermont towns can link directly to the town’s Web site. West points out that because of the way search engines work, many Vermont towns may be difficult to find online. “Wikipedia understands how to structure information so it makes sense to computers as well as humans,” she explains. “By linking the town’s Web site in Wikipedia, that will make them more findable on Google.” With a degree in library science and membership in the American Library Association Council [sic], she has also contributed to entries about libraries. She’s a fan of a parody TV show called Reno 911, and watches that page, too, as well as the entry for a band she likes. Every page West edits she adds to her watch list; 10 to 15 Vermont towns get revised each day, she says. She removes any vandalism she sees. “I see a lot of kids edit Wikipedia, add their names and friends’ names to it,” she said. “It’s why I have a watch list.” The next project she’s considering: going back to the Vermont town entries and adding links to public libraries….

Jessamyn West’s view: “In library circles, sometimes, there are people who complain: ‘I found something wrong on Wikipedia.’ I wonder, ‘Did you change it?’ We are all responsible (on Wikipedia). That’s an unusual way to feel about a Web site. You are responsible if you see a mistake. Everyone should be responsible for making Wikipedia better.”

jessamyn, me, rutlandherald, wikipedia

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This may change in a day, Wikipedia being what it is, but as of this moment right now there are two mysterious entries on the subject of Captain Underpants (look under Series of titles), detailing upcoming books that are (according to Scholastic) not currently in the works. Is this the frenzied scribblings of an uber-fan or could Pilkey be mucking with our brains? Only time will tell.

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It's a wikiworld and we're just living in it.
Yes, human civilization has reached the point where we are so advanced that publishers like Penguin can set up the very first wikinovel for interested parties to play with.

Penguin, which embarked on the project with a group of creative writing and new media students, says it is using the novel as a test of whether a group of disparate and diverse people can create a "believable fictional voice."

"This is an experiment. It may end up like reading a bowl of alphabet spaghetti," Jeremy Ettinghausen, head of digital publishing at Penguin UK said, adding there were no plans as yet to publish the completed work.

It's called A Million Penguins. In a perfect world this would mean that it's a sequel to 365 Penguins. No such luck. As it is, it contains thus far such stirring sentiments as, "Pity that she was unable to dance as well as she could have but what can one do? He took the dress off his victim as a keepsake, so that he can relive the dance they shared." I love it when they change tense midstream, don't you? Ah, but this is too easy to make fun of. I think we should create a wiki children's novel in retaliation. We'd have to set some ground rules like, "No ripping off J.K. Rowling. No ripping off Roald Dahl. No ripping off Laura Amy Schlitz," and so forth. But I think it'd be fun. Food for thought.

Thanks to the Powells blog for the link.

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Funny no one's thought to write this before now. It's the story of Wikipedia Brown, which synthesizes many of the problems people have with that particular website. If you didn't grow up reading Donald Sobol's stories as a kid, you may feel you are missing something here.

Thanks to Eric Berlin for the link.

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Today's "On This Day..." feature for February 3rd on the Wikipedia home page features the anniversary of Emperor Meiji taking the throne in Japan. The "Meiji Restoration" is of course a major historical element in my young adult novel Samurai Shortstop, and precipitates much of the conflict between Toyo, his father, and the new Japan. The picture they feature (shown here) is the one Toyo sees hung on the wall of the ethics lecture hall at the beginning of chapter two.

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