Wikipedia: A New Community of Practice?

During its brief existence Wikipedia has proved astonishingly successful. Its two million articles (in English alone) are available freely to all with access to the internet. The on-line encyclopaedia can be seen as the 21st century's version of earlier historical attempts to gather the world's knowledge into one place.This unique book first offers a description of some of these earlier attempts. The second part is an analysis of Wikipedia itself, and the third part contains suggestions about how to approach it, how to contribute to it and what one might gain from it.The book contributes towards bridging the gap between print culture and the internet. It will have a broad appeal to anyone interested in the development of this source of information, including library and information management professionals but also historians, sociologists, educators and students.

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