Saturday, September 24, 2011

Learning about wikis

A wiki is one of those computer applications I always approach with some caution. The great thing about wikis is that anyone can contribute and edit information. The negative thing about wikis is that anyone can contribute and edit information.

The wikis I checked out for this activity seemed fairly interesting. What I liked about the SJCPL wiki was that it pooled together great topics/resources that would be of interest for the surrounding community. It had information and links dealing with everything from education and local businesses to hobbies and pets. I think for a public library, this is a useful feature for its users who could find what they need in this one wiki as opposed to searching all over a website or online for this information. The Book Lovers Wiki from the Princeton Public Library was perhaps my favorite of the wikis suggested. It was so useful in searching through the different categories of recommended reading. Not only was the title and author given, but a synopsis and review of each book was provided as well. I'm always keeping my eyes open for suggested books to read, so I found this wiki very convenient and easy to search through. Library Success also seems like it can be a very useful tool for librarians. It provided quite a bit of resources for librarians on all matters pertaining to librarianship.

I can see from the above examples how a wiki can be used as an effective tool in gathering and disseminate information. I think though that a library ought to carefully consider whether or not a wiki would be beneficial for that particular library and its users before deciding to establish one.

1 comment:

  1. I found the Book Lovers Wiki also pretty interesting. The reviewers seemed to be honest about their reviews and didn't give every book 4 stars. A book review wiki would be useful for many libraries and I think it would be even better if the libraries' book club (if it had one) would be able to post their reviews on the books they read. That way patrons could see a variety of opinions and wouldn't dismiss a book off of one bad review.

    ReplyDelete