Week Seven, Thing Sixteen

Moving on...This post is about wikis and their implications for, what else, libraries.

I have to admit I've been one of those people whose mind immediately jumped to wikipedia whenever the word wiki turned up. To put it mildly, I've been generally distrustful of the site. What's frustrating is that I often see students turn to it as their sole trusted resource for any particular question, whether it's personal or school related.

However, I do think wikis have good capabilities and good applications, particularly for libraries. I really enjoyed Princeton Public Library's BookLovers Wiki. I've been wanting to collaborate on something like this in my own work environment. What a great way for staff and the public to learn about new books, find recommendations, review their own reading, in an open, shared network without hierarchy or division between participating groups.

I'm also really impressed by the Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki. Just in the few minutes I spent exploring I found several resources that could be quite helpful in my current work setting. In particular there are some neat programming ideas, such as the cookie swap, and the area devoted to services to specific groups had some intriguing resources. I just posted the Services in a Multi-Lingual Environment page to my del.icio.us account. I sincerely hope I come back to it. I fear that del.icio.us may become a new, elaborate way for me to procrastinate. A technical version of "I'll get to it later."