Truthiness
This is a little late in coming, but I just discovered this great article in the Washington Post on the current state of Truth. The article largely concerns what Stephen Colbert referred to as Wikiality, or truth by consensus. I’m actually a huge supporter of the Wikipedia, and despite my newfound access to the Britannica I still continue to utilize it far more often, and for most of the reasons that David Weinberger elaborated on at MLA last week.
The more fascinating point the Post elaborates on here is that people are progressively becoming too impatient for truth of any other kind. The inference here is that all questions are now expected to be ready reference ones. There’s a great example in the article of how even the simplest reference interview can be too trying for the attention span of some of our patrons. We may have a problem here.
Tags: libraries, MLA, David Weinberger, Wikipedia, Reference, ready reference, reference interview, Washington Post, Britannica, Wikiality, truth
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May 13, 2008 at 8:39 am
This reminds me of an ad I saw for our school library sometime last year. It said something like “2 hours online can save 20 minutes in the library,” and I remember thinking that I didn’t really believe it.