The Signpost


Book review

Review of the Independent Scholar's Handbook

Let me begin with my thesis about this book, written decades before Sanger and Wales ever thought about creating Nupedia or Wikipedia: this is a book everyone who contributes to Wikipedia should read — even the Wikignomes and devoted vandal fighters who aren't directly involved in creating content. I say that partly because this book prepared me for the ideal of Wikipedia many years ago, and partly because it is available as a free PDF online — but also because it presents the idea that everyone has the opportunity to actively participate in the adventure of intellectual discovery and publication.

While this book covers much of the same ground that the essay-writing books assigned to college freshman have — how to find an idea, how to do research, and how to write a paper — it also goes beyond these topics. Such as how to find a topic which truly interests you, rather than one that will appeal to your teacher; how to find resources to use in your research, since a serious scholar has outgrown the high school library; and how to find kindred spirits who will properly understand and appreciate your work. Specifically, it addresses the question: "If I am not writing an essay to get a favorable grade from my professor, then what is my motivation? Whom am I writing for?"

One of Ronbald Gross' primary theses is that true intellectual activity is outside of the academic setting. Some of the most enjoyable passages are his short profiles of various independent scholars, examples of a tradition which includes Eric Hoffer, Barbara Tuchman, and I. F. Stone. As Gross writes at one point:


He also addresses such problems we would-be scholars never confronted in school, such as pitfalls in our research or thinking, managing our time and energy, and perhaps most important of all, getting the necessary recognition — or even attention — for our work. Independent scholars might be free of the typical in-fighting and politicing that characterizes many academic settings or think tanks, but we are also at risk of finding ourselves isolated. Thus we need to build networks where kindred souls share research and exchange ideas — in some ways, what we have in Wikipedia. Sadly, instead of feeding this interaction, it appears that the emphasis of the Wikipedia community has drifted to emphasize other matters, like enforcing policies or finding new ways to automate tasks. Wikipedians ave grown so worried about the reputation of our project that we are becoming our own worst enemies, driving away the kindred spirits we need to keep our project running in order to appease the professional experts and inhabitants of academe.

Yet these individuals need the independent researchers and scholars more than we need them. As Gross points out at another point:


Perhaps the reason Wikipedia has succeeded is that the combination of the hardware of the Internet and the software of the Wiki has allowed a large group of people to collaborate inexpensively on a valuable yet, basically routine and unimaginative project — writing an encyclopedia, a reference work. Knowledge is so big, so varied, and almost incompassable that it requires a team to research it and arrange it so others find it useful in opening new views. However, being harmless drudges, far too often the average Wikipedian is overlooked in favor of those who would expound on policy or program new tools for them to use.



















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