Wiki, Wiki, Wiki (Exercise #16)

I'm excited to get to wikis, not just because it's fun to say, but because it's something our library has started using to create subject guides. I created one on Literary Criticism. Unfortunately ours doesn't fully take advantage of what wikis can do because only librarians can edit the entries. Not my decision, but not much I can do about it. I can see the point that we want our information to be as accurate and scholarly as possible, so we don't want just anyone to be able to add any kind of content. I wish though that patrons could at least take part in the discussion tabs of the entries, so they could make suggestions. After all a lot of our professors know as much and probably more as we do about the best resources for any given discipline.

Still I'm happy about what we've done so far. One thing that wasn't mentioned on the list of benefits for this exercise is how easy it is to organize your entries and link to other things. It's really easy for people to navigate. I once tried an assignment where I had students compare a biographical entry from Wikipedia with a biographical entry from Literature Resource Center. Though most could see how the information in LRC was more thorough, they all agreed that Wikipedia was so much easier to read.

Out of the examples that were shown I really liked the SJCPL Subject Guides . It seemed like they had really personalized it. For instance I looked at the Arts&Entertainment section, and it included a Staff Favorites section. I like the idea of using a wiki to help create a community at the library. I can see public libraries maybe setting up a wiki for their young adult patrons as a way to get them more involved. I can also see how an internal wiki might be a good way for librarians and staff to communicate. Blogs can be good, but with a wiki you could link to relevant resources that you find, especially for those times when you have a bunch of students coming in all working on the same assignment.

When I went to the ALA conference in D.C., I saw that they had a wiki for it, but for some reason I really didn't use it that much. Maybe because I knew I didn't really have time or money to go explore restaurants and attractions. I just wanted the basic facts of the conference. I didn't really hear about that many people using that wiki for their conference planning. I wonder what makes some wikis popular and others not.

I've heard of a few libraries that are adding links to some of their collections to Wikipedia pages. For instance if it's an entry for a famous person or place, and they have a special collection for it, they add a link to it. I hear it's increased the traffic to those sites. It sounds like an interesting way to use Wikipedia to our advantage instead of trying to ignore it in the hopes it will go away.