A c t i o n f o r L i b r a r i e s — A u g u s t 2 0 0 5

The Internet Connection

By Michael Sauers
Welcome to the Wonderful World of Wikis
For those of you not familiar with wikis, here's a brief introduction courtesy of Wikipedia: "A wiki is a Web application that allows users to add content, as on an Internet forum, but also allows anyone to edit the content. The term wiki also refers to the collaborative software used to create such a Web site." In simpler terms, a wiki is a Web site that anyone can edit, without any XHTML knowledge needed.

If you've never used a wiki before, Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) is a great place to start. It is an online encyclopedia of more than 630,000 individual articles on almost any conceivable topic. Because of, or maybe despite the fact that anyone can edit any of the information in Wikipedia, studies have shown that its content is more than 99 percent accurate.

Recently, two new LIS-related wikis have been started. The first is LISWiki (www.liswiki.com). Started by John Hubbard in June 2005, its purpose is to "give the library community a chance to explore the usefulness of wikis." Initial articles include subjects ranging from audio e-books to patron privacy to filtering software.

The other new wiki is Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki (www.libsuccess.org). Although similar to LISWiki, Library Success is designed to be much more focused in its scope. It was created "to be a one- stop- shop for great ideas for librarians. All over the world, librarians are developing successful programs and doing innovative things with technology that no one outside of their library knows about."

Take some time to look at these three wikis. Not only can they be useful to you at the reference desk, I also encourage you to participate and contribute your knowledge and experiences to these amazing resources.

Next Article | Previous Article | Table of Contents | BCR Publications