(Eric Frey)
The Middlebury College Department of history decided for the spring 2007 semester that students would not be able to use www.wikipedia.org as a legitimate source in academic papers. This decision is a sensible policy and a move that is needed at Miami University.
While many professors at Miami inform their students not to use Wikipedia in assignments, the free online encyclopedia whose entries are open to almost anyone for revisions, other faculty members do not and students are left uncertain about Wikipedia's reliability. Miami students should be made well aware in every collegiate course they take of a uniform standard about academic sources and that Wikipedia and www.google.com searches do not constitute as scholarly research endeavors into complex subject matters.
The goal of Wikipedia is exemplary in that it provides a free online encyclopedia for all Internet users. And as the recent Middlebury College decision articulates, Wikipedia serves as a great gateway to other resources that may provide more reliable information, but Wikipedia's actual content is only brief and cursory - and sometimes inaccurate. Last semester, long time and award-winning journalist John Seigenthaler Sr. traveled to Miami to share his experience. An anonymous user added a sentence to Seigenthaler's Wikipedia entry that implicated him in the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Such outrageous claims are indicative of Wikipedia's significant flaws in accurate research.
Miami students are introduced to the vast academic resources available at King Library in their first year, but as technology continues to change rapidly their knowledge of academic resources becomes outdated. Each Miami course should reinforce the tools the library has to offer and ensure students are kept abreast of the latest research avenues. Miami currently offers dependable resources like the New York Times, JSTOR and LexisNexis. While Google searches may be tempting because they can be done quickly and easily, Miami has tried to make access to dependable academic resources even easier. A Miami student's uniqueID and password enables access to the library's resources.
Once students are made aware of proper academic sources and have it reinforced throughout their four years, they will be able to leave college with a better perspective of the world and able to tackle issues with a scholarly perspective. The danger of using a source such as Wikipedia is that it clouds the minds of those seeking factual information - especially college students who are beginning to compose term papers. Colleges educating students about these dangers will help to make young people more aware of where accurate information is likely to be found.
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