Mindful Ink     Life, Living and Productivity

How many times have you heard a professor suggest that Wikipedia is completely unreliable and essentially useless because “anyone can edit it?” Niko Pfund, the publisher of the Oxford University Press, disagrees and is in fact “increasingly bored” by his colleagues’ vilification of the Wiki project. Why?

“The Oxford English Dictionary, arguably the greatest reference work in the English language…found its origins in a wiki model, whereby scholars put out the word to English speakers far and wide that they would welcome hard evidence of the earliest appearances of English words. The response was astonishing…so much so that the building in which the word submissions were kept, called The Scriptorum, began to sink under the weight of all the paper. Wikipedia is here to stay and its evolution will be one of the more interesting publishing and technology stories in the next decade.”

Pfund also suggests that the anti-wiki bias in academia may be rooted in professional self-interest: if regular people can contribute to academic discussion in a meaningful way, maybe academics aren’t so “elite” after all. What do you guys think? Are the OED/wiki models comparable?

“Inside Oxford University Press: Questions for Niko Pfund” [h/t to Wired Campus]

An interesting video. HackCollege had a link to another video they (the producers of the other video I’m about to show, not HackCollege) produced which I’m not as fond of, but I found I enjoyed this quite a bit. I think students, we paragons of knowledge workers, certainly would do well to give some serious thought to what we know and what we don’t, how we know and how we organize it. This video starts the conversation.

Care of Digital Ethnography (updated for clarification)

 A few days back I wrote a bit about the process of reading academically, and how the “tricks” we may learn to read other books do not work so well in these environments. A while back I mentioned a bit of this as well, producing a “Reading” cheatsheet you can get here as well as some “reading note cards.”

Lifehack.org has written an excellent follow up post discussing those “tricks” that DO help.

1. Skim the book. Examine the table of contents to get a feeling for the structure and main points of the book. Flip through the chapters, skimming the first few paragraphs of each, and then the section headings. Check the index for any topics you feel are especially important. Then, if you have time;
2. Read the Introduction and conclusion. Most of the author’s theoretical position will be laid out in the introduction, along with at least a summary of the chapters and sections within. The conclusion revisits much of these points, and usually gives a good overview of the data or other evidence. Sometimes the conclusion is not marked as such; in this case, read the last chapter. Then, if you have time;
3. Dip in. Read the chapters that seem most relevant or interesting. Get a sense for what the author is trying to accomplish. Flip through the rest of the book and look more closely at anything that catches your eye. Then, if you have time;
4. Finish the book. Read the whole thing. If you know you’ll have time, skip 1 - 3 and just read, cover to cover.

For a lot more like this, and a book that taught me a great deal with tips like those above and more, is the classic: How to Read a Book.

Cal Newport over at Study Hacks posted a follow up piece to my Beyond Wikipedia article.  Beyond Wikipedia: 15,731,298 References You Can’t Do Without.  This is what I love about the internet - the ongoing conversation, the refining response.  Cal also makes a good point with:

his brings up, however, an important question regarding student study habits: what role should web sites play in the writing of a college-level paper. The answer — and I think this is important for new students to hear — should be: basically none. A serious college-level paper should not cite any source that begins with “http”. There are, of course, obvious exceptions. Some contemporary primary sources, for example, exist only online. But the general rule is important.

In general, I agree.  For the most part, much of the sources I listed, would not be the best sources to site in a paper.  That being said, some are.  The web holds a great deal of primary sources now - complete texts, almost every scholarly article written, and even online books.   And for those purposes, I’ve used them myself.

But generally, a paper is going to be about books - and while you may be able to find them on ebrary.com, you’re generally going to end up in the library and Cal’s advice is well received.

I actually plan on tackling this subject in more detail eventually, the trick here is how different university libraries are.  But I do, really, highly suggest you go speak to your librarian and see just what resources your library has for you.  I can virtually promise you, you’ll be amazed.

Beyond Wikipedia: 15,731,298 References You Can’t Do Without