Wikis and Wikipeeing

If the title still reads "Wikis" then I still haven't thought of anything better to write there.

Maybe inspiration will hit between the time I write the rest of it and post the article...we'll see. Anyway, I think the majority of us will have come across Wikipedia somewhere in the last few years (if you've ever been a teacher since it existed, it will have been handed in to you at some point, cunningly disguised as a student's own work). Reasons why it might have hit your radar even if you have never used it are:
1. Instances of plagiarism of Wikipedia articles in students' work.
2. Issues of creditability (have you ever looked at Conservapedia?).
3. Sometimes, it's just funny.

I think I probably use Wikipedia itself on a weekly basis. It is my ready reference tool (because all the encyclopaedias are the other end of the library). In fact, I last used it last Friday when a keeper wanted to know where in the library we kept the museum catalogues from the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest (we couldn't immediately do a search on Newton because we weren't entirely sure how the name was spelt - you can see why!).

Some time ago, I did get involved in trying to write a wiki for an archery club. I spent hours a day, and still barely scratched the surface of all the knowledge I was trying to impart. The project lost impetus, and was archived and pulled off the internet by an overeager webmaster. I think it is important to stress the amount of time you will personally have to spend creating the wiki, and generating initial content. As the structure gains flesh, more and more contributors will be able to see what's missing and be able to offer their own views, but there's this period of "blank page syndrome" when so much is missing that it's hard to know where to start!

I'm not sure how well a library wiki would work in my present library. It might be a nice way of saving the computer officers from having to do the uploading when we want to change something on the website, but beyond recreating the userguide in a different (more easily editable) format, I'm not sure what we'd actually use a wiki for. I don't think we have the sort of users that would want to contribute to anything (trust me, it's hard enough getting some of them to even use the catalogue without help!). I could be wrong, though. It's an interesting concept to think of researchers who've used the library generating content for a library wiki, so if I get the opportunity to try it out, I may well do so.

Having seen the other sites and how they've used the wiki, I think it's clear that they've thought about what they want to present very carefully. I'm the sort of person who gets lost in tangential information - I could spend hours trying to win the Wikipedia Game - so I'd have to be careful not to create a sprawling behemoth that tries to cover absolutely everything!