I’m mystified by this incident.
Wikipedia already has a book lookup feature that gives the user the option to look up books using the ISBN.
This even works for the Da Vinci Code, so I can totally see why an individual link to worldcat on a book record might be viewed as a not good way forward if there is already a process in place to look up books in WorldCat, RedLightGreen, and online booksellers. I really wonder if this room full of outraged librarians knows about this tool.
Why not work with wikipedia on their existing form for looking up books?
Update: It looks like the editor who removed the link clarified the answer. One thing that might be useful when asking editors at Wikipedia questions about policy is to sign up for a Wikipedia account yourself. I imagine that wikipedia users might be more likely to answer questions quickly when they come from other members of the community.
2:39 pm on May 10th, 2005 1
I don’t think they know.
2:41 pm on May 10th, 2005 2
A look through the comments and it looks as if someone has caught on and mentioned it.
3:03 pm on May 10th, 2005 3
Yeah, that’s where I figured out what was going on too. I don’t see why the whole thing ends up being an example of wikipedia being unwelcoming to stuff like worldcat, thus arousing librarian ire at a particular uncommunicative wikipedia editor.
It seems to me that we should be thinking it is cool that the wikipedia folk have already figured out a mechanism for linking to WorldCat and RLG.
3:22 pm on May 10th, 2005 4
What you said. Plus, can you imagine manually adding a link everytime a book is listed? I shudder just thinking of the extra work. The way Wikipedia is set up for ISBNs, keeping in mind its breadth of audience, is totally the way to go.
11:03 pm on May 12th, 2005 5
Wikipedia has a culture, guidelines and procedures just like libraries do. Things that would have helped Jenny here would have been registering as a user, and adding text in the “edit sumamry” box so people would know what she was doing.
Wikipedia is beset by spammers especially on popular entries. If you look at the history for that entry, it shows other people trying to put affiliate shopping links in there, it’s no surprise that this attempt was quashed. While I think Jenny’s teach-by-showing examples are a great way to explain complicated online things, I see this sort of the same way as I see library students sending “sample” reference questions to “ask a librarian” services to evaluate the responses. The system only flexes so far, and the resources you can use to work with them are finite.Wikipedia is not a market-driven product and yet it IS very popular which is the good news and the bad news in scenarios like this one.
9:02 am on May 13th, 2005 6
Thanks Jessamyn. I was wondering too, if Jenny would have gotten more immediate feedback from the wikipedia editor if she was a registered user too.