#16 LEARN ABOUT WIKIS 9/13/07

I found wikis to be very interesting. After reading about them, I am surprised to find myself wanting to explore the further after I have completed the 23 Things. Who would have thought that? I am going to keep in mind some of the wikis that were referenced in this exercise and research them more at a later date. I think that within libraries, wikis could be applied to online bookclubs. Patrons interested in certain genres could look at various wikis to find new authors that may be of interest to them. Also, I think that librarians could share ideas with other libraries throught the world with regard to new programs. They could share programs that were successful or not so successful within their branches. I think that the librarians who specialize in the pre-teen and teen age groups could also have a wiki that the teens could use to contribute their ideas for programs for the library. It could be a safe place on the internet for teens to talk to each other. This could be monitered by the librarian for safety. I did find it interesting that one of the wikis stated that due to vandelism, that anyone who wanted to use the wiki had to confirm their password. I thought that this was a good idea. It may give a certain degree of control as to the content of the information shared in the wiki. Due to the editing by anyone feature of most wikis, I would never tell anyone to use a wiki as a concrete source on a subject, especially politics and history. Too many people try to pass off their opinion as fact, when, in fact, their viewpoint has no factual basis at all. It may be helpful to use a wiki just as a reference to find out what a new "term on the street" might mean. I think that this would be helpful to teachers in the middle and high school system to find out what their students are talking about these days. School teacheres are another group that would possibly benefit from a wiki, because they could share information and ideas with other teachers about programs they taught and positive teaching methods. So what's in a wiki ....... well, alot more than I ever thought. AVG