"the content of a wiki depends on the knowledge and commitment of participants."
While in theory a Wiki has a lot of potential, and even I admittedly have used the biggest Wiki, Wikipedia for quick and dirty information when I'm totally clueless, the truth of the matter is that there is no real authority to back up the content accuracy. I suppose that's the problem with most of the information found on the internet these days. Again, my grain of salt theory.
This article from the BBC News
Editorial row engulfs Wikipedia
pretty much sums up the basic issues.
1. I watched the Common Craft video on Wikis and now I am not as much in love as I was before! They do make things easy to understand, but this was a little bit oversimplified. Maybe because I already had some familiarity with wikis, PBwiki, Wetpaint, etc. I had previously attended a Neflin workshop on the Bells and Whistles of Blogs and Wikis and discovered there, that out in the WWW there was a plethora of applications to choose from and found them to be not as easy as all that.
2. I actually liked the St. Joseph County Public Library's Subject Guides. They appeared to use it much like a community Rolodex. I've been wanting to have something like that at our library for MANY years. My guess is that only staff have access to updating it. The Book Lovers Wiki, developed by the Princeton Public Library has some great things too, but our library already has some serious review info on our website like Bookletters and its BookPage reviews and interviews. I think the Book Lovers Wiki would be more apropos for a smaller library setting.
A library staff wiki has great potential for updating information in a timely manner. We tried using one already in our department for ready reference responses to email, and in theory it's great-- that is 1) if you can get it set up working the way you want it to in the first place, and 2) if you have people dedicated to maintaining its accuracy and timeliness. I would really like to see this one brought back to life.
We already have an "intranet" but it is not as user-friendly. We also have some "shared" folders on our server, but the documents take up a lot of space there. I think a wiki would allow more people accessibility and it would save space and time when it came to document sharing.
3. Added my two cents worth on the Neflin wiki... I really did!
Having done that I then went to the Core Competency blog of the Public Library of Charlotte-Mecklenburg County, Wiki, Wiki, Wiki! and was fascinated to find out the word "Wiki" comes from the Hawaiian phrase "wiki wiki", which is commonly used to indicate something fast.
Are we SURE this is 23 THINGS?!! By the time I'm done, I'm sure it will be more like 67...I have been to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg County library in NC. They always seem to be a step ahead of everyone so it's no surprise that the 23 Things project originlly came from them, even though it's loosely based on Stephen Abram's "43 Things I might want to do this year." I agree with one of the comments posted there...
Vinnie Boombots said… "A wiki can never be an authoritive source, but there's no harm in using them as a starting point. If you find something that answers your question, you can verify that elsewhere, having something to go on."
Well put Vinnie!!!
