Any reference librarians get questions that resulted from Wikipedia being down? If so what type of questions did you get? Where you able to answer the questions with your collection?
I have heard from one librarian that they received calls from home school kids that were working on projects and needed a different resource because Wikipedia was down.
Re: Reference questions while Wikipedia down?
I didn’t get any reference questions I wouldn’t have gotten had Wikipedia been up, but our encyclopedia sets saw some action. We posted fliers for the day that read Wikipedia would be down, while promoting our encyclopedias.
timing/academic library
First of all, much of the news media (including NPR) missed a major fact (especially with their concerns about “students being without luck”) very few students are allowed to use Wikipedia as a source, so it had little impact there (this is also true of high school students I asked).
Secondly, the timing of this blackout made it difficult to assess any impact at an Academic Library; Tuesday was the first day of classes, so very few students were doing any research at all on this day.
Timing
>>the timing of this blackout made it difficult to assess any impact at an Academic Library; Tuesday was the first day of classes, so very few students were doing any research at all on this day.
We were back to classes a week before