http://weblogs.elearning.ubc.ca/googlescholar/

Wikipedia founder: "Librarians Needed for Accuracy, Readability, Scope of
Entries"

In any analysis of Web search, many of the issues/trends begin to merge. A
good example comes this week in Nature's Wikipedia vs. Britannica article
which found that there was no significant difference between these two
sources in terms of accuracy of its science entries. Some medical entries
include Dolly (cloned sheep), Creutzfeld-Jacob Disease (CJD), lymphocyte,
prion, Vesalius, West Nile Virus. For these topics, Wikipedia had slightly
more errors than Britannica. 

Meanwhile, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales says in Nature's Weekly Podcast
that "As we grow the wikipedia community, information specialists and
librarians are needed to assess the accuracy, readability and scope of the
entries..." To Wikipedia: hire some librarians!

Keep in mind that regular Google can be used to find Wikipedia entries on
medicine; Scholar cannot.

Dean Giustini
UBC Google Scholar blog