Thursday, November 8, 2007

Thing 16: Wikis

I've used wikipedia for some time now as a quick and easy reference source. As Cotonmom mentions in her blog, they're a great resource for locating lists of books in a favorite series. Example: Can you please tell me the title of the 6th Lemony Snicket book? Click here for the wiki answer, scroll down and you'll see the entire listing of the titles in A Series of Unfortunate Events.

HOWEVER, caveat emptor. As Nancy points out, the opportunities for abuse are well documented. Good names have been slandered by pranksters and cybervandals. Nancy gives this link to real world examples of wiki vandalism.

I do think we can use wikis responsibly in assisting library customers by making sure that they understand the need to back up any information from this egalitarian, community encyclopedia with authoritative, vetted reference sources.

The possibilities for collaborative work using wikis are endless. Six years ago, I became involved in a community project involving high school redistricting in Howard County. We probably generated 2000+ e-mails over the course of five months, all with their own attachments, distribution lists, etc. I can only begin to imagine how we could streamline such a project by using a group wiki, with links to sub-projects, documents, calendars and timelines.

I would like to invite the Central Branch of Howard County Library to start a project wiki of this sort. For example, we could create one for HCL's new HCC partnership. Some library staffers from the fiction department have met with their departmental liaisons at HCC. They developed an excellent, informative handout for their initial presentation. Why reinvent the wheel? We can create a Central HCC+ wiki, post a link on it to this document , and then other Central liaisons can view it and tailor it to their own presentations with other academic departments. This wiki could contain general information, links to sub-groups (such as the arts and humanities liaisons and the social sciences liaisons) and their working projects...the list goes on and on.

Starting a wiki looks like it's as easy as going to pbwiki.com , wetpaint.com or wikispaces.com

Anyone wanna give it a try?

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