“Komplettera med något” : Hur undervisande högskolebibliotekarier förhåller sig till Wikipedia

Sammanfattning

The aim of this Bachelor’s thesis is to expand the knowledge about teaching academic librarians' relationship with Wikipedia and their perception of the website’s credibility. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews with six teaching academic librarians. The data was then analyzed qualitatively through the lens of the three concepts credibility, source criticism and source trust. The overall findings show a consensus among the librarians towards Wikipedia. They used Wikipedia in their work, though to which degree depended on their personal interest in the website. Moreover, they believed that it could be used as a way for them to further their own education in specific subjects, source criticism and academic writing. The interviewed librarians were either active writers or editors on Wikipedia or could imagine themselves becoming it in the future. However, opinions varied on the subject of researchers writing about their own research on Wikipedia, as some librarians meant that using Wikipedia as a promotional tool had a negative effect on the website’s credibility. They had a positive view of students using Wikipedia as a way to begin their information searching, but discouraged using it as a sole source, and suggested that educators might benefit from being more open-minded towards the website. It is suggested that further research could explore teaching academic librarians' relationship with artificial intelligence (AI) and their perception of its credibility, as the interviewed librarians expressed that they felt like the current concerns about AI largely had replaced the similar concerns previously conveyed about Wikipedia.