Wiki Thoughts

Like most people, I am mainly familiar with the concept of wikis from Wikipedia. I do enjoy Wikipedia, but I use it more as a toy than as a research tool. When I was in college, some of my friends and I played a game called Five Clicks to Jesus. To play, you go to Wikipedia's main page and click on Random Article. You then click on a link within that article to get to a new article. The idea is to get to the Wikipedia article on Jesus from your original random article in only five clicks. It's fun, and you get to learn a lot of interesting things along the way. But although I will occasionally go to Wikipedia first to get a brief overview of a subject before starting more serious research, I would never use Wikipedia or any other wiki as an authoritative source. I think this is something that makes many people nervous about ever using wikis, as can be seen in the comments on the PLCMC webpage that talks about wikis. But a wiki like Wikipedia that allows anyone to add or edit information is not intended to be an authoritative source to be quoted in a research paper, it's simply a place where a user can get general information about a subject. And it's certainly useful for a subject where the information changes frequently, such as an article about a television series. Although really, a wiki is more reliable than a static webpage. If something is wrong in a wiki, someone who knows better can just fix it, but if someone has created a static webpage with incorrect information, no one can do anything about that. The safest bet for research is probably going to a book (and wouldn't a librarian say that!), but wikis shouldn't be maligned quite as much as they often are.

I thought some of the wikis about libraries were really interesting. I was most interested in seeing what could be edited and by whom. It really seemed to depend on what the purpose of the wiki was. The SJCPL subject guides can only be edited by the librarians, and that's because the purpose of using a wiki instead of a website is so that the links can be updated frequently and by whomever has access. But because this is a wiki that is to be used for reference by patrons, the SJCPL librarians don't want patrons to be able to change things, and so they've restricted access to editing the wiki. Patrons are still allowed to make comments on the wiki, but they can't edit the links. On the other hand, the Princeton library's reading group's wiki allows anyone to post a book review, as long as they're registered users. This wiki allows patrons as well as librarians to post reviews, and also allows the posters to decide whether they want to remain anonymous or not. Looking through the posts briefly, I did notice that some of the reviewers posted more than one review. But it also seemed that a lot of different people took advantage of the opportunity to write a review, including librarians, named patrons, and anonymous posters. It looks like this is something that a lot of people enjoyed doing.

I really love the idea of creating some sort of place where people can post book reviews. Just today, I was shelving new books and a patron asked me if I had anything good on my truck. I hadn't read any of the books I was shelving, and so I told her that I didn't know. She browsed through the shelves, and I continued shelving. She found some books to check out, and as she was leaving, pointed out a book that she had read, and told me that it was very good. I recognized the name of the author, and thanked her for pointing it out to me. Perhaps this patron wouldn't have been interested in reading a blog or a wiki where various patrons and librarians posted reviews of their favorite (and not-so-favorite) books, but it is certainly something that I would be interested in reading and contributing to. In our move toward L2, I hope this is something that BPL considers.