My website is less an actual “website” and more of a research tool. It’s a personal wiki with organized and cross-references notes from my research for my dissertation.
Eventually, I’d like to make this into a truly public site, so any suggestions for organization, clarification, etc. are very much appreciated.
(The password is the name of the town I used to live and where my dissertation advisor currently lives — spelled backwards.)
I started to correct the very flawed Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl entry in Wikipedia, but decided not to since I didn’t want my edits to somehow influence the plagarism investigation into one of my students. But, let it be know that it is a terrible entry! instead, I added a brief overview of Project Renew to the Unexploded U.S. Explosives section of the Wikipedia entry on the Vietnam War.
With some hesitation, I do appreciate Wikipedia for what it is. I agree with Rosenzweig that it is a useful research starting point, but I will probably tell my students not to quote/cite it for research papers. Of course, I am still quite suspicious on online research, so my objections to Wikipedia are not personal, per se. However, it is frustrating to me that so many students see Wikipedia as the final arbiter of history — or maybe they’re just lazy?
Rosenzweig’s article convinced me that my innate distrust of Wikipedia is a bit of an overreaction and misplaced as the online encyclopedia compares quite favorably with professional publications such as Encarta and the American National Biography Online. Additionally, the ability to track changes and respond to errors/vandalism is a clear strength of Wikipedia. (see an earlier post about politics and Wikipedia here)
This week’s readings have given me an idea for a potentially interesting assignment for the class I’m teaching this summer: either in class or an outside paper, I will have students critically evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of a Wikipedia entry. I have to think about this a bit more, but it might be a very useful way to convince students to question all sources, particularly unauthored, internet sources. What do you think about this potential assignment? Would you, if you were a freshman or sophomore at AU, take away something useful from such a project or would you feel insulted and belittled?
I sincerely enjoyed poking around the blogs and carnivals, but had to cut myself off because the midterms refused to grade themselves. I thought Mark Grimsley made a number of excellent points about the potential usefulness of blogging for academics — I particularly like the idea of making my work into a form of procrastination! What did you find most useful/interesting in the readings for this week?
Like Rod, I attended the “Googling for Scholars” workshop at the library on March 28, 2006. I was thrilled to learn that the library had found a way to combine the searching abilities of Google with the resources of th academic library. Now, assuming you access Google Scholar through the library, you can access the full text for many of the articles and other sources unearthed by Google Scholar. The search results link you directly to the full text (if it is provided by American University) and even link to the Aladin catalog when relevant.
The “cited by” link takes you to a new set of results listing books, articles, reviews, etc. that reference your original search. When I put together the preliminary bibliography for my dissertation, I searched JSTOR, America: History and Life, and America: Historical Abstracts, Proquest, and Project Muse. These databases were very useful and each returned a slightly different set of results, but now I want to know how Google Scholar compares — particularly, I’m curious to see if Google Scholar will direct me to any sources the other searches overlooked. I have high hopes for the “cited by” link and I hope they pan out this afternoon.
I will have to do a number of comparative searches before I replace Proquest or JSTOR with Google Scholar, but it certainly in my top five searches at the moment.
Although relatively few people quibble about the basic facts of the Vietnam War – locations and dates of major battles, the details of coups and US military operations, domestic dissent and politics, diplomatic conferences and negotiations, etc. – I doubt people will ever agree on the meanings and interpretations of those facts. When debating the rights and wrongs of the Vietnam War and other topics, it can be very useful to have a user-friendly source of basic information easily accessible. Before the internet, people turned to encyclopedias and paper reference books (or, if a student at Bowling Green State University, called the FactLine) to settle disagreements on basic questions of fact: when was the coup that toppled Ngo Dinh Diem? how many advisors were in Vietnam before the Gulf of Tonkin incident? what exactly did Nixon promise the South Vietnamese government? With the internet, such questions are now answered through a quick Google or Wikipedia search. Such searches tend to turn up two types of website: overviews and timelines. (more…)
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