There are some obvious differences in using the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, and a traditional encyclopedia, World Book. For this assignment, I’m comparing the entry, Pulitzer Prize. It’s something that every student journalist would research at some point.
When looking at the Wikipedia entry, the thing that stands out immediately is the invitation to improve the article by adding information. The second thing that stands out is the organization of the material. The researcher is given a short introduction to the topic and then a list of “Contents’’.
In World Book, the researcher must thumb through several pages to find specific categories of information about the topic. So you’ll notice immediately, that using the encyclopedia will require more time. However, you could find yourself clicking on link after link in Wikipedia and really getting distracted.
It’s been years since I’ve used a traditional encyclopedia. (The display in the library was so pretty that I took the attached picture.) I expected the encyclopedia to be very outdated and was surprised when World Book included the 2010 Pulitzer Prize winners.
I think that each method has its advantages. I feel more confident in the accuracy of the information in a traditional encyclopedia. Without a doubt, Wikipedia wins out on timeliness, but because anyone can edit it, the researcher must always be concerned about its accuracy.
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