From the Dean’s Corner…
Posted by: hlooby in 3-Ready for Publication, tags: Dec Dean's CornerEasy to Find, But Is It Accurate?
By: Mary G. Persyn
Associate Dean for Library Services
In 1931, legal educator and Philosopher Karl Llewellyn wrote an essay on research in which he described the threat of the available. According to Llewellyn there is an “almost inevitable tendency in any thinking, or in any study, first to turn to the most available material and to study that – to study it exclusively – at the outset; second, having once begun the study of the available, to lose all perspective and come shortly to mistake the merely available, the easily seen, for all there is to see.”[1] One of the recurring discussions among law librarians today is the tendency of students to rely entirely on easily-accessed digital materials for their research.
This is not to say that digitally available information is bad. For those of us who grew up with only paper resources, this brave new world of electronic information is wonderful. Sources that once took hours to search can now be investigated in seconds. However, digital information is seductive. It is so easy to search online, even if the search is not properly conduced, or the information that you find is not accurate, it is easy to believe that what one has found is all that there is to find and that it meets one’s needs for accuracy.
Example – A law student needs to check a piece of biographical information and turns to Wikipedia, the ubiquitous online encyclopedia that is created by volunteers, because it is easily available. The student ignores the fact that there is no authority behind the information she finds except the presumed expertise of Wikipedia authors. A reader who disagrees with the first author can sign on to Wikipedia and change the information. The student has two problems 1) the original information may not be correct; and 2) the information on Wikipedia may be different the next time the student checks the same link.
The difficulty with Wikipedia seems to be most acute when dealing with living public figures. There have been several widely-publicized events in which libelous information has been posted on Wikipedia, perhaps the most famous that of John Seigenthaler Sr.[2] In April 2009 Wikipedia adopted the following statement “Wikipedia articles can affect real people’s lives. This gives us an ethical and legal responsibility. Biographical material must be written with the greatest care and attention to verifiability, neutrality and avoiding original research.”[3] However, no one is following all articles on Wikipedia to see that they are accurate.
If you want to use an online encyclopedia, try the Encyclopedia Britannica Online (http://search.eb.com/), an encyclopedia with over 200 years of authority behind it.
The same question as to accuracy of information can be made for any information found through Google or another online search engine. Consider that first page placement on Google is a function of popularity and payment for placement. Also investigate the background and possible bias of the creators of a web site before you rely on the information from the site.
When doing research remember that the most easily available information is not necessarily the information that will provide the best answer for your client. Before you complete your research ask yourself whether you have found the best answer to your problem or whether you have succumbed to the threat of the available.
FOOTNOTES:
1 Karl N. Llewellyn, Legal Tradition and Social Science Method-A Realist’s Critique, in Essays on Research in the Social Sciences 89 (1931).
[2] http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-11-29-wikipedia-edit_x.htm
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons
Dean Persyn can be reached atMary.Persyn@valpo.edu.
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