Reference Librarian Jeff Maehre publishes in College Teaching

Ort Library Reference and Instruction Librarian Jeff Maehre is the author of "What It Means to Ban Wikipedia: An Exploration of the Pedagogical Principles At Stake."

The essay appears in the Fall Issue of College Teaching, an interdisciplinary journal devoted to communication between faculty.

Maehre argues against teaching faculty making a priori prohibitions of information from Wikipedia in student work. He argues that doing so promotes a product-based pedagogy and cuts against critical thinking and against a holistic approach to source evaluation.

This is Maehre's first academic essay. His fiction has appeared in Story, Cutbank, The Northwest Review, and Phoebe and is forthcoming in Backbone Mountain Review.

Here's a link to an electronic version of the essay through FSU's databases, which will require a log-in.

Wikipedia Bibliography

Wikipedia Bibliography, Sept. 09 installment

There's no letup in the storm of attention on Wikipedia and other forms of user-created content. And in addition to the mainstream media, scholarly journals are
publishing on the issue with increasing frequency.
The philosophical issues surrounding social knowledge are as important as any issue to students and faculty: let's all be as informed as possible.

Here's a selective bibliography of recent articles focusing specifically
on Wikipedia. Within a particular category they are in descending chronological order. Each comes with a permalink to its citation within its FSU database (log-in required). Some will allow you full-text access and some will not.


In Academia

Polkinghorne, S., & Hoffman, C. (2009, June). Crown Jewel or Pure Evil? Wikipedia Through an Information Literacy Lens. Feliciter, 55(3), 101-103.
Link

Badke, W. (2009, March). Stepping Beyond WIKIPEDIA. Educational Leadership, 66(6), 54-58.
Link
Camihort, K. (2009, March). Students as Creators of Knowledge: When Wikipedia Is the Assignment. Athletic Therapy Today, 14(2), 30-34.
Link
Leaver, T. (2009, March). WIKIPEDIA: WHAT'S IN IT FOR TEACHERS?. Screen Education
Link
Crovitz, D., & Smoot, W. (2009, January). Wikipedia: Friend, Not Foe. English Journal, 98(3), 91-97.
Link


Characteristics of Contributors 

Ha, J., & Kim, Y. (2009, Spring2009). An Exploration on On-line Mass Collaboration: focusing on its motivation structure. International Journal of Social Sciences, 4(2), 138-143.
Link
Amichai-Hamburger, Y., Lamdan, N., Madiel, R., & Hayat, T. (2008, December). Personality Characteristics of Wikipedia Members. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 11(6), 679-681.
Link
Nov, O., & Kuk, G. (2008, September 17). Open source content contributors’ response to free-riding: The effect of personality and context. Computers in Human Behavior, 24(6), 2848-2861. Retrieved September 16, 2009, doi:10.1016/j.chb.2008.04.009
Link

Information Theory

Anthony, D., Smith, S., & Williamson, T. (2009, August). THE CASE OF THE ONLINE ENCYCLOPEDIA WIKIPEDIA. Rationality & Society, 21(3), 283-306. Retrieved September 16, 2009, doi:10.1177/1043463109336804
Link
Hansen, S., Berente, N., & Lyytinen, K. (2009, January). Wikipedia, Critical Social Theory, and the Possibility of Rational Discourse. Information Society, 25(1), 38-59. Retrieved September 16, 2009, doi:10.1080/01972240802587562
Link
Garfinkel, S. (2008, November). Wikipedia and the Meaning of Truth. Technology Review, 111(6), 84-86.
Link