Wikis

I delved into the world of wikis tonight (by the way, did you notice my RSS feed to the left of the screen? Yay, I did it!). I think the idea behind Wikis is good - everyone going to one page to place and edit information. You could use this to create library newsletters, say for a teen group, they can work on it from home and collaborate. It would also be useful for distance uni students to use when they have to collaborate on an assignment, no more of the toing and froing of emails.

One concern I have is noted in the 'Library success: A best practices wiki'. People can put in false information or use it to satisfy a personal vendetta, thereby making it necessary for someone to be responsible for monitoring the content and cleaning up where necessary. If there are ways of securing a wiki so that only certain people could access it to edit it then it could be used in the ways I mentioned above. I did think the 'Library success' was a great wiki, full of information of value to librarians everywhere. I noticed that they now require email confirmation, this is a good security measure and hopefully will limit any damage that can be done by mischief makers.

The 'Book lovers wiki ' is good value and could be used as a readers advisory (in a limited sense). Borrowers or prolific readers would be able to post their views on books, almost like a mini bookclub! There are blogs out there that provide a similar concept, but are limited to one persons opinion, whereas this wiki is open to many opinions.

'Wookiepedia', hmmm, what can I say....well, it is certainly a Star Wars lovers dream and entertaining reading. I do have to wonder why the people who post here haven't got something better to do, but each to their own I suppose. The info is out there in a galaxy far far way (LOL). Actually, it's rather close - the WWW galaxy, where all newcomers can find something to waste their time on, or expand their knowledge in ways they never expected. Ahh, now, that is the Jedi way.....