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Thing #4 Wikis

July 31, 2008 First up, watch this video:

A wiki is a collaborative website and authoring tool that allows users to easily add, remove and edit content. Wikipedia, the online open-community encyclopedia, is the largest and perhaps the most well known of these knowledge sharing tools. With the benefits that wikis provide the use and popularity of these tools is exploding.

Some of the benefits that make wikis so attractive are:

• Anyone (registered or unregistered, if unrestricted) can add, edit or delete content.
• Tracking tools within wikis allow you to easily keep up on what been changed and by whom.
• Earlier versions of a page can be viewed and reinstated when needed.
• And users do not need to know HTML in order to apply styles to text or add and edit content. In most cases simple syntax structure is used.

As the use of wikis has grown over the last few years, libraries all over the country have begun to use them to collaborate and share knowledge. Among their applications are pathfinder or subject guide wikis, book review wikis, ALA conference wikis and even library best practices wikis.

Discovery Resources:

Use these resources to learn more about wikis:

• Learn More: Wikis
• Derek’s Blog– Musings on the use and impact of technology in education, and of the future of education in general.
• This 2007 presentation by Joyce Yukawa, MLISProgram, College of St. Catherine at Minnesota Library Association is a great resource on how libraries can use wikis as their Web presence.

Discovery Exercises:

1. Take a look at some library wikis and blog about your findings. Here are a few examples to get you started. Pick two or three that might interest you:

• SJCPL Subject Guides – a pathfinder wiki developed by the St. Joseph County Public Library system.
• Book Lovers Wiki - developed by the Princeton Public Library.
• Library Success: A best practices wiki
• The Albany County Public Library Staff wiki – an example of a wiki created for library staff to document procedures.
• Library Blog Wiki
• Sample school wiki
• Sample Literary Circle Wiki (10th Grade English)
• Sample AP World History Wiki
• Teacher Librarian Wiki
• Educators Wiki

3. Create a blog post about your findings.

• What did you find interesting about the wiki concept?
• What types of applications within libraries and schools might work well with a wiki?
• Many teachers/faculty "ban" Wikipedia as a source for student research. What do you think of the practice of limiting information by format?
• Which wiki did you edit?

Congrats! You've finished another of the 12 Things!

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Posted by Michael Stephens on July 31, 2008 | Comments (1)