Not all professors oppose the Internet, NLC adjunct responds

Dear Editor: Mr. Biles' recent editorial presents a view that I suspect is common among many students. The Internet is easy to use, and it is something many of our current students have grown up accepting with little regard to quality of the information available there. For the historian, accuracy is an important issue that cannot be taken for granted. Mr. Biles compares the accuracy of Wikipedia with the Encyclopedia Britannica. While Wikipedia may be less inaccurate than the Encyclopedia Britannica, the fact remains that in college level research papers tertiary sources are rarely acceptable regardless of the medium. The Oxford Classical Dictionary would be one of the few exceptions to that rule. The professors at many institutions are not rejecting the Internet, they are rejecting certain types of sources, especially tertiary sources of unknown authorship.

The Internet began as a tool by, and for, the very people Mr. Biles claims oppose its use. It developed from an improvement in technology, the development of packet switching technology, and the desire of academics to share information quickly and easily. Today the Internet offers wonderful resources for the serious scholar. Not long ago the best source for images of ancient art was the Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae. Today one can go to the Internet to view ancient works of art and photos of papyri that are normally kept locked away in climate-controlled vaults. World- Cat is a worldwide catalog of books making it easy to determine the location of needed materials. JSTOR offers a wide range of journal articles available to download in the PDF format. InfoTrac offers over twenty million articles from over six thousand journals. The French were forced to make the L'Anée Philologique database available online when the German academic community threatened to take it over if the French did not add an online version. With the Internet, one can easily see the work of Dr. John Dobbins at Pompeii, complete with detailed photographs and maps. Using the Internet as a tool for scholarly research is being driven and expanded by the demands of college professors across the world. In other words, the professors are not inhibiting the use of the Internet, they are a driving force behind its use by students.

As a teacher I do not oppose using the Internet. I want students to use the Internet, I want them to develop research plans from a wide range of sources using good information, whether working in a library or sitting at home. I have a duty to prepare students for both the workplace and for studies at four- year institutions. To fulfill that obligation, it is incumbent upon me to instruct students in how to discriminate between sources. If one were to turn in a paper at a four-year institution with sources such as Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia Britannica in the bibliography, one at best would be called aside for a private discussion to explain the failing grade, and at worst one would be publicly humiliated. There is, as Mr. Biles suggests, a bias among the faculty, but it is not against the Internet per se, it is against unacceptable sources. Learning to use the Internet effectively is an important part of the learning process at college.

One last point involves the illustration that accompanied Mr. Biles' editorial. On the left one sees a trash container full of old reference books. While the Internet is an important tool, it is just one tool and not the final solution. Books are still published, a tradition that probably will continue into the future.

I find the Internet to be a very useful tool, but I also enjoy having a book in my hands, something I can hold and feel, something in which I can make notes, something that I can see sitting on a shelf in my library. Perhaps that does make me a bit of a Luddite after all. - Larry Lehman, adjunct professor, North Lake College

Editor's Response: While Mr. Lehman makes many good points, his attitude towards the Internet is the exception to the rule at NLC.

The majority of the professors here state explicitly on the first day of class that any use of the Internet for source information is forbidden.

Many who do not prohibit the Internet as a research tool do so for the sole purpose of mining through online databases - databases which are merely digitized collections of material that appear in print.

Today, a great deal of information is created, originally, on the Internet including Blogs, whose accuracy is comparable to any newspaper.

Not allowing students to source blogs in today's world is like saying they can't use a newspaper - something no professor would ever do.

The other source is Wikipedia. Lehman is correct that it is a tertiary source. As such, it would not be acceptable for a student's research paper.

However, the tertiary source argument is not made by most professors. "You don't know who wrote it," is the most common reason given.

Wikipedia is a fully-sourced encyclopedia which provides students direction just as well as does Info- Trac. The irrational fear of Wikipedia is a widely held academic meme which needs to be retired .

Finally, books are a valuable commodity. Lehman's claim that they will always be around is correct, but their continued existence doesn't mean they will always be pertinent.

Content is the most important thing, not the medium on which the content is contained. Just as the iPod has rendered CD players nearly useless, so, too, will the Internet render the book a quaint and nostalgic artifact. That is an issue confronting universities and massmedia outlets, such as this newspaper, alike.

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