What do you want? Information!

Many people (both technophobe staff and members of the public) still seem to disparage the internet and its resources, and often blame it for a detrimental change in libraries, who uses them, and how they are used.


A perfect example might be Wikipedia, which many people will tell you is full of errors, bias, hidden agendas and downright false information, as though you would be so much safer in the secure portal of (say) Encyclopedia Britannica. Well, yes, sort of... Encyclopedias do get edited and researched, vetted and assessed, revised again, and all that. So the information they contain seems pretty accurate (if dull). They also respond to change very slowly, have very limited information on obscure subjects (even assuming they offer a listing at all) and they certainly have agendas of their own (EB seems to have quite a US bias, for instance).


Wikipedia, however, in spite of the turf wars on certain 'hot topics' has far more detail on subjects of minority interest, written (for the most part) by enthusiasts, who are experts of a different kind.

They are both useful resources, even if, as Robert Anton Wilson explains:

"When I was working on my historical novels, my wife used to collect old encyclopedias. Every time she was at a bookstore they had an old set of encyclopedias and she’d buy it. And so we had about eight different sets of encyclopedias in the house. So every time I wanted to look up a historical detail, I’d look it up in three or four of the encyclopedias and always—it didn’t take as much as three—usually only two I’d find a disagreement.

If I went through all eight encyclopedias, I’d find eight different answers. Like how old was Mozart when he wrote his first symphony? – he was either 7 or 8 depending on which encyclopedia you’re looking in. This is what provoked me to what I call “Wilson’s 22nd Law: Certitude belongs exclusively to those who only own one encyclopedia. If you own more than one you’d be thoroughly encountering a certain amount of doubt and a certainty about things in general.” There is no one reliable source; there are a dozen different sources all claiming to be reliable. You got to use your own ingenious mind, and your own talent for analysis and skepticism to try and figure out “Which one of these guys really sounds like he might know what he’s talking about?” or “Which one should I bet on?”

Every act of perception should be regarded as a gamble. From the experiments I’ve done and the experiments I’ve led and in my workshops and seminars, that has become overwhelmingly obvious and true to me. Every perception is a gamble.The major problem with the US is that about fifty percent of the population who at least thinks The Bible has all the answers. And then there are libertarians who think Ludwig van Mises has all the answers—except for all the ones who thinks Ayn Rand has all the answers. If you think there’s one book that has the answers, you’re never really going to discover anything and you’re never going to think an original thought. If you find out there’s twelve books with different answers you’re almost forced to start thinking. So I feel the internet is forcing more and more people to do something they have never done in their lives before and just try to make an independent judgment and how to judge between alternatives.

Not sure if I got that quote verbatim, but IMHO - RAW got this right... libraries promote thinking, they don't simply offer answers...we'll miss them if we get rid of them...

Searching Questions

I do find it odd that people still treat the Internet as an unreliable resource for facts. Many library staff don't seem to trust Wikipedia, for instance.

Of course, in a market place you have to watch your purse, not buy any old thing unexamined, or get too excited by someone on a soapbox, but generally you can find what you want if you take your time.

As ever, I don't think of things in black and white. The OED and Encyclopedias may well have gone through fact-checking editors, etc , and can present relatively objective facts - but even Encyclopedias don't always agree on those 'facts'.

“Certitude belongs exclusively to those who only own one encyclopedia.” - Robert Anton Wilson

I do use these old reliable resources for simple matters of fact like the date of a king's coronation.

Bare facts, or fine detail?

For detailed research, however, the internet (taking Wikipedia as a perfect example) has compilations of detail that Encyclopedias (in their necessary compression and brevity) can't possibly compete with.

Taking an example from my own knowledge base, I checked out 'Juggling' (no entry, but found 'Juggler') in the Encyclopedia Britannica, and got a not very helpful 289 words or so, mostly about circus.

In Wikipedia you find a Juggling entry written by experts - with not only the speculative history of origins, lists of famous jugglers and their feats, but also the history of the last few decades when this obscure skill or art form became a hugely popular pastime as well as developing rapidly in both the entertainment world (skill levels have rocketed) and in the nutty, obsessive Guinness Book of Records mode. Links to animations and videos on how to learn; links to books, classes, and other deeper resources like the Internet Juggling Database (which includes lists like 'every film ever made with a juggling scene in it, or even a background character juggling).

Contribute to knowledge

Now not all those facts prove accurate (I had to correct the number of people at the first juggling convention, because I attended as one of the participants, and had first-hand knowledge). But the wiki structure means I CAN correct and tweak these facts. And yes, I gather people sometimes get territorial about certain areas of Wikipedia (much the way academics used to form a closed shop to alternative theories, while writing up their 'objective' encyclopedia entries!)

Learn to assess information

So even if some 'facts' online have got lazily copied and pasted around, have lost their source reference, or become misquoted - for inspiration justifying further search and verification it seems hard to fault the Web.

Training in assessing results, judging and estimating the value of information sources and resources, etc seem an extremely useful part of any future educational projects. Surely the combination of detective and investigative journalist could appear inviting to inquisitive children, if their exams didn't get based around finding 'the right answer' or 'the truth'.

The sooner people discover that 'hard facts' rarely prove that simple or obvious, and we all learn to hold back from jumping to conclusions or relying on just one Book or source of knowledge to the exclusion of others - and see what we know in terms of probabilities rather than certainties - the sooner we may achieve a more intelligent, tolerant, generous world. IMHO.

I thank you for listening to this rant.

[The speaker climbs down from his soapbox, picks it up and walks away].