Wikis or Community Plots

Week 7 #16 #17

Wikis are like community gardens - a shared area with minimal formality to which anybody can contribute but which overtime may develop an agreed form. As such they are also subject to some of the same bugs & production issues.

I can see the benefit of a Wiki for:

• search guides: SJCPL Subject Guides &
• recommending books Library Success: A best practices wiki
• staff contributing to internal wikis to build guides to good work practices, ideas etc that may be informally known, only stored in a physical format or disseminated in an ad hoc fashion. This would be similar to a good intranet page with the benefit that anyone could contribute.
• students to share work (maybe within a limited access environment) in preparation for its presentation to class/teacher, esp if students are regularly separated by distance, illness, time etc.
• reader wikis linked to catalogue
• Wikipedia is great. The inherent danger of biased, incorrect or dated info etc is a concern but who would knock back a free share from the community plot just because of one bad apple! (pun intended). From what I have read Wikipedia does use experts & pest control to keep such problems under control & afterall, all information is suspect until facts are cross-checked with several other sources. I like that Wikipedia has entries on diverse subjects which encyclopedia don't normally cover. I also like its clear & consistent presentation, hyperlinks etc.

ButI doubt the use of wikis for events management because of the fixed nature of most of the information given. Wikis are more useful "on a subject that changes or needs updating frequently." ( http://plcmccore.blogspot.com/2006/04/wiki-wiki-wiki.html wiki, wiki, wiki)

Sandbox

Every good garden needs a recreational area & I've dug into this one to add my blog, a favorite book: White man's Garden, & I've created the beginnings of a pbwki for private use.