Wikipedia's Influence on the Evolution of Encyclopedia Sara Librenjak Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Zagreb Zdenko Jecić The Miroslav Krleža Lexicographic Institute, Zagreb Damir Boras Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Zagreb INFuture2009: Digital Resources and Knowledge Sharing

◄ Background Traditional encyclopedia: compiled and edited by a group of experts considered absolutely reliable Wikipedia: open edited, internet accessible 50,000 http requests per second 80,000 SQL queries per second 7 million registered users 18 million page objects in the English version 1.5 terabytes of compressed data

► The G oal of the Work: To investigate why is Wikipedia so popular among users, in what manner and why are its shortcomings ignored, is it replacing the traditional encyclopedia or is the format of encyclopedia just evolving with the social changes.

► The Survey Online survey in form of a questionnaire was assembled, conducted and processed by the authors Sample: 123 Wikipedia users from Croatia

► Internet Usage Purposes of the Subjects

► Wikipedia Usage Habits

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………… Groups of Questions: Opinions on Wikipedia, its usage and role The comparison of Wikipedia and traditional encyclopedia Croatian Wikipedia

< Opinions on the Wikipedia’s reliability Absolutely reliable26% More or less reliable71% Not reliable at all3% The quality of the articles depend on the topic57% Wikipedia should be edited by professionals52% Open editing leads to misinformation39%

< Wikipedia’s articles are… Appropriate for citation in papers15% Professional, as in traditional encyclopedia 11% Without spelling or grammar errors20%

< When is traditional encyclopedia preferred? When writing a school/college paper or article 46% To check Wikipedia information31% In any situation8%

< Why do you use Wikipedia? Wide choice of subjects74% Ability to find desired information quickly70% Free of cost68% Available in multiple languages35% Quality of content26%

► ► ► …………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ► Conclusion Wikipedia is used more than traditional encyclopedia, despite the awareness of its shortcomings. Wide choice of topics, quick searching and free access are more important than information accuracy. That motivate us to think about migrating traditional encyclopedia to a digital space, and learn from Wikipedia’s positive sides.

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