The summer issue of the Journal of American History includes a thorough and judicious paper on Wikipedia by Roy Rosenzweig, a professor of history and new media at George Mason University. Should professional historians join amateurs in contributing to Wikipedia? “My own tentative answer,” he writes, “is yes.”

Rosenzweig qualifies that judgment with all the necessary caveats. But overall, he finds that the benefits outweigh the irritations. “If Wikipedia is becoming the family encyclopedia for the twenty-first century,” he says, “historians probably have a professional obligation to make it as good as possible. And if every member of the Organization of American Historians devoted just one day to improving the entries in her or his areas of expertise, it would not only significantly raise the quality of Wikipedia, it would also enhance popular historical literacy.”

The article should be interesting and useful to scholars in other fields. It is now available online here.