Back in January, I made some hooting noises and pointed at Jimmy Wales in the context of the tempest-in-a-teapot that erupted after the Middlebury College History Department added Wikipedia to its list of works students may not cite in papers.
One of the more useful published reactions to the whole affair — certainly more useful than mine — seems to me to be Cathy Davidson’s Op-Ed in the Chronicle of Higher Education, “We Can’t Ignore the Influence of Digital Technologies” (53:29, 23 March 2007 [sic!]).
Among other provocative suggestions, she asks:
Rather than banning Wikipedia, why not make studying what it does and does not do part of the research-and-methods portion of our courses? Instead of resorting to the “Delete” button for new forms of collaborative knowledge made possible by the Internet, why not make the practice of research in the digital age the object of study?
Those, like me, who don’t subscribe to the Chronicle can read the letter via Davidson’s blog at HASTAC.
