First Year Seminar 183
Freedom and Openness Everywhere

Library Research Assignment
Due: Friday, Oct. 2

The purpose of this two-part assignment is to perform research in an effort to answer the question, How good is Wikipedia compared to other encyclopedias?

Part I: Literature Search

The Rosenzweig article, Can History be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past, JAH 2006, 117-146, describes and discusses some studies that compared Wikipedia to other encyclopedias--in terms of accuracy, coverage, and other dimensions. However, the results reported there are somewhat dated.

Your task, therefore, is to discover the freshest and most authoritative research on these questions.

In addition to answering the general question we have raised, your research should also address the following questions:

Part II: Comparative Study

Choose topic about which your are personally knowledgeable and for which their are encyclopedia entries in Wikipedia, Britannica, and Encarta. Then read the corresponding articles in each encyclopedia and write up a 1-page comparative analysis of them. Your analysis should be similar to what the other studies have done -- i.e. how many errors (large or small) were detected, how comprehensive was the treatment of the topic, how well was it written.

Writing up your Results

Hand in a well-written, 2-3 page paper that concisely answers the main and the subsidiary questions of this research project. Bear in mind that for Part I you are not being asked your opinion on these questions. We want to know what the facts are and how much confidence we can have in the facts as you report them. And for Part II any conclusions you draw about the quality of one or the source, should be backed up by facts and evidence.

The source of the facts and information you discover must be accurately and completely cited and referenced in a standard bibliographic format.