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on Wikipedia
Feb. 9th, 2011 08:17 amSo the lab report I just completed was like an introduction to polymeric manipulation and finishing methods. It was a lot more qualitative than the other lab reports - we watched demonstrations and did small experiments, and we had to answer questions rather than produce analysis and calculations.
For a lot of the questions asked, we weren't given the material to answer them in class (big surprise) and thus had to look them up. And I won't lie: out of my 20 or so citations in this report, probably 12 of them are different Wikipedia pages.
It makes me feel very funny. I'm from an age where I grew up not having the internet at my fingertips for answers -- and even when I was in university, citing a website was a fringe-y sort of no-no, or "not unless you have to" type thing. (Yup: surprise, Dear Readers, I am old.)
Now, on this report, a lot of that is just not caring - I actually emailed the professor to ask where I could find some information I was having trouble googling, and her response was "Most, if not all, of the grad students here use Wikipedia. If you want better information you can try [books X and Y] in our science library." My first response was "Oh good, Wikipedia wasn't very informative"... and that was quickly followed by "Um, it's Monday; when the hell am I going to get to the science library to look this stuff up before Friday."
No wonder online sources - Wikipedia or others; I happen to love the Macrogalleria for polymer stuff; don't laugh, it's very informative - are so common nowadays. Who wants to trudge down to a library - or even into their (really messy) study and pile of used textbooks - and flip through pages of indexes and tables of contents and chapters to find the structure of cellulose acetate? When I can type it into Google and find it in seconds? And it counts -- they don't seem to care as long as you cite it properly, and I've got ACS format all over this guy. I am a citation and reference badass.
And it seems cool in a way, too, that there is so much information out there that can be easily found and I can spend 15 minutes reading up on birefringence and dichroism before I have to answer those sections -- and then I can move right on to poly(methyl methacrylate) without having to get up and find a totally different textbook.
It's just interesting to me, the concept that something like Wikipedia is ok as long as it's cited properly and labeled. I know some of you are librarian-types, so don't laugh at me for using Wikipedia, my prof totes said it was okay and I am a lazy lazy asshole.
For a lot of the questions asked, we weren't given the material to answer them in class (big surprise) and thus had to look them up. And I won't lie: out of my 20 or so citations in this report, probably 12 of them are different Wikipedia pages.
It makes me feel very funny. I'm from an age where I grew up not having the internet at my fingertips for answers -- and even when I was in university, citing a website was a fringe-y sort of no-no, or "not unless you have to" type thing. (Yup: surprise, Dear Readers, I am old.)
Now, on this report, a lot of that is just not caring - I actually emailed the professor to ask where I could find some information I was having trouble googling, and her response was "Most, if not all, of the grad students here use Wikipedia. If you want better information you can try [books X and Y] in our science library." My first response was "Oh good, Wikipedia wasn't very informative"... and that was quickly followed by "Um, it's Monday; when the hell am I going to get to the science library to look this stuff up before Friday."
No wonder online sources - Wikipedia or others; I happen to love the Macrogalleria for polymer stuff; don't laugh, it's very informative - are so common nowadays. Who wants to trudge down to a library - or even into their (really messy) study and pile of used textbooks - and flip through pages of indexes and tables of contents and chapters to find the structure of cellulose acetate? When I can type it into Google and find it in seconds? And it counts -- they don't seem to care as long as you cite it properly, and I've got ACS format all over this guy. I am a citation and reference badass.
And it seems cool in a way, too, that there is so much information out there that can be easily found and I can spend 15 minutes reading up on birefringence and dichroism before I have to answer those sections -- and then I can move right on to poly(methyl methacrylate) without having to get up and find a totally different textbook.
It's just interesting to me, the concept that something like Wikipedia is ok as long as it's cited properly and labeled. I know some of you are librarian-types, so don't laugh at me for using Wikipedia, my prof totes said it was okay and I am a lazy lazy asshole.
