Before I begin I would like to inform the reader that this post is twinned with another produced by Timothy Howard which may be viewed at the following web address:
http://tjfhoward.blogspot.com/
No Digital History blog, especially one produced by myself, would be complete without a post on Wikipedia. If anyone reading this is somehow unaware of what Wikipedia is, it is basically an encyclopaedia which is accessible on the internet. Furthermore, though providing articles on historical subjects, those articles it offers consider subjects relevant to other academic fields besides history.
So to what extent has it been of service to me? If Dr Cosgrave is reading this article he may remember about two years ago setting an assignment for his second year students doing the BA in Arts at UCC. Specifically, the task we were set was to produce three different mind-maps depicting a plan of the same essay that one might write on the French Revolution. My personal knowledge about the event, to be quite honest about it, was hazy. Thus I turned to Wikipedia for help. I can’t remember the exact mark I was given for this assignment, though I do recall being satisfied with it. Had it not been for Wikipedia I may not have done as well as I did. This is but one example of how the tool assisted me as a historian.
Wikipedia has been an enormous benefit to me down through my years in college. At times during my BA years, lecturers advised us (the arts students) to get out books from the UCC library relevant to the essays we were assigned. However, the students were so many in number that I struggled to acquire from the library those books relevant to my preferred essay title. Alternatively to this frequent frustration, there was the option of purchasing some of the books that were significant to my preferred essay question from either the college shop or one in town. The downside of this route was that it cost money. In contrast to the purchasing of books and library borrowing of books, Wikipedia (theoretically) has the advantages of both options: the provision of gratuitous access to historical information, and the universal applicability (to the extent that the student/historian has access to the internet – which ultimately we all do through the UCC computer centre).
Another advantage of Wikipedia is its speed. For example, if the historian was to refer to a book-based encyclopaedia it would take longer for them to find the article addressing the specific topic which they wish to read about. By contrast, Wikipedia has a search option which, more often than not from my experience of using it, has immediately displayed whatever article I was searching for.
New events are constantly taking place, and new discoveries are constantly being made. For users of a book-based encyclopaedia this may be an impediment if the edition in their possession is not up-to-date. However, such a situation is not an issue for Wikipedia users as its material is potentially expandable. Specifically, any article concerning a particular historical topic about which nothing has yet been written can always be added. Furthermore, those that do exist but are crude in their discussion of a particular topic can be elaborated and amended.
That Wikipedia is most ideal for providing the basic facts about a particular topic with which the historian may be completely unfamiliar is compounded by the capacity of this digital-tool to interlink its pages. For example, if the historian is investigating the history of Christianity, and historical figures from the Old Testament were mentioned, a reader with no exposure to the faith may be completely oblivious to the significance of names such as Moses. This difficulty is overcome by the fact that such words are ‘links’. What is meant by this is that they are highlighted blue, and if the student/historian clicks on them, they are redirected to an article which discusses the link word’s theme in detail. Again, this provides an advantage over a book-based encyclopaedia which would take up more of the reader’s time. If the reader was confused about particular subjects mentioned in the article they may be reading, and thus needs to understand these words’ significance before they (the historian) can resume reading their original article of interest, this link facility would save them considerable time and so reduce the extent to which their train of thought is disrupted. Once finished reading the link, the historian can simply click on the back arrow visible in the top left corner of the screen which will return them to their initial article of interest. By contrast, the same cannot be said of a book-based encyclopaedia.
As a result of the potential for public contributions in elaborating and amending Wikipedia articles, there can be quite considerable variation in the length of various articles. This problem is overcome by menu options within the lengthier articles. These provide both the advantage of telling the viewer what the contents of the article may be, and also allow the reader to skip immediately to their specific topic of interest within the article if it is not all relevant to their interests, by clicking on the subtitle within the contents box. This facility displaces the need for users to seek and find a particular theme being discussed in the article, which might not even be addressed at all, by scrolling down the screen.
A final benefit of Wikipedia, or rather an indirect benefit of the web-based encyclopaedia is that it can be digitally stored. By copying and pasting it to a word document it can then be saved onto a hard-drive or a USB key and backed up. Therefore, if the user of the article needs to refer to it without an internet connection (after having saved it) they are able to do so. By contrast, the book-based encyclopaedia can at best be replicated through photocopying its articles. If these are lost then it is more laborious to produce additional copies. By contrast, saving an article that has been pasted onto a Microsoft word document is quite easy. Furthermore, if the individual/historian in question has access to a printer then they can produce as many copies as they want. If they lose a copy and need another, they simply need to refer to the article which they already have digitally stored and once more, print it off.
This post has focussed on the advantages of using Wikipedia as a digital tool. A discussion considering the disadvantages of this digital tool may be found at Timothy Howard’s blog, the web address of which is displayed at the very beginning of this post.
