Thing 15. To Cite or not to cite.

I have had a changing relationship with Wikipedia over my professional librarian career. I used to view it with a healthy skepticism, indeed, encouraging people not to go near it as the information couldn’t be trusted – anything that can be changed so easily is not a trustworthy source surely. That was at the start of my career. I’ve moved on since then in my relationship to Wikipedia, partly because on occasion it has been the only place I have been able to initially find information on a topic to start my research process, and also because I understand how it work better and the work people put into keeping it up to date and relevant. In school now, my approach is to suggest using it as a starting point if you want but go to the original references if there are any, or if facts are unverified, see if you can back them up elsewhere. As mentioned in the Thing 15 article, it is ‘useful as a starting point for research’. And this is where good research and information assessment skills come in so useful and looking for material to provide a missing reference was a useful reminder to me of what it feels like to try and hunt down accurate information, rather than just teach my pupils how they should be doing research.

I should say this is the first time I have looked for citation needed information, and it may not be my last. I found the randomness of the citation hunt tool a bit of putting at first, but with thousands of citations needed, it’s probably the best way to find some you want to answer. After searching around a few I kept coming back to one in particular (see below). I became determined to find a resource to meet the citation needed, and so the hunt became a quest – it became fun.

Screen shot from Wikipedia page showing citation needed. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_David#Presidential_use Accessed 21^st April 2018.

I did take some time to find resources that I felt would pass as a reference to confirm the information quoted. I performed a number of different searches, scanned numerous articles, I now know more than I ever wanted to about Camp David in America, but it was reading a variety of articles that built up familiarity with the topic and names, places to look out for. With two potential websites in hand, I applied a website evaluation tool to select the most useful. The result of the C.R.A.A.P reviews are at the end of this post. 

This process has reminded me how frustrating and challenging researching information on topic you may know nothing about can be. And I was reminded that this is what I and teachers are actually asking pupils to do. Using website evaluation tools like C.R.A.A.P. (new to me) or C. A. R. (Current Accurate Relevant) being one I promote at school, certainly helped me decide on the value of the websites I found and why. Using a different review tool also gave me a different approach in evaluating websites – new questions to ask myself or to look for on the websites.  Working through this process has reminded me to empathise more with pupils who are struggling to find information or assess its appropriateness. taking time to see things from the pupils point of view is always useful!

Being asked to do detailed and specific research on the web is not something that I am asked to perform a great deal at work, so I am perhaps a little rustier than I used to be. Looking for Wikipedia citations is one tool I could use to keep my information searching and website evaluation skills effective. With the ever increasing amount of 'information' on the internet, the more tools we have in our information searching and evaluating tool box to help find the most relevant information the better.

After much internal debate I have added the reference to the Wikipedia page. It was quite straightforward in the end! The citation added is now No. 13. 

C. R. A. A. P. review of websites

https://www.infoplease.com/history-camp-david

• No evidence of last update though the comments about presidents stop with George W. Bush so it can be no later than 2009. As we are two presidents on, figures may have changed. Mentions the same as Wikipedia: “President Ronald Reagan spent more time at Camp David than any other president”.
• Not very relevant as it focusses more on the history of the place that directly answering he citation needed.
• I don’t know much about the validity of Infoplease and I wouldn’t feel comfortable using them to back up another document, especially with no creation dates or references in their article. The site claims content is editor created not reader contributed.
• It doesn’t answer the citation query, just replicates the original statement with no reference.
• The purpose of the article appears to be to inform and it does that if you are wanting an overview of Camp David history, but not the statistics of which American president has visited Camp David the most.

      -  I would not recommend using this article

  

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-makes-first-trip-to-camp-david-as-president/

•  Very current being published 17^th June 2017, and any updates would not have altered the details of the article enough to affect the claim in the Wikipedia article that President Reagan visited Camp David the most.
• The article is relevant, commenting on the visits made to Camp David by America Presidents. The article provides figures that actively support the claim in the Wikipeadia article.
• CBS is a media name I recognise and trust. Though aware it is a commercial organisation, I feel it has enough stature and recognition to trust the information it gives. Also the article was written with input from CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller, who on further research appears to be a very well respected journalist.
•  I have faith in the accuracy of the article though there is no statement about the source of the statistics in the article, other than what was mentioned above. He has written many other articles about this issue in his own name, so I would not have any doubt of the accuracy of the information as he appears to be a specialist in American presidents for CBS.
• Its purpose is to look at the current president’s usage of Camp David compared to other past presidents, which I feel I does as fairly and neutrally as it can. The use of statistics leaves the reader to make up their own minds about the issues raised. Overall the aim does appear to be to inform the reader.

+     I would recommend using this article. Reference added to Wikipedia article.