This week we collaborated on Wikis. I added my comments to the Favorite Books page (The Shadow of the Wind, The Wind in the Willows, and Jane Eyre), and the Favorite Vacation Spot page (Skagen, Denmark). I have gotten to use a Wiki on a couple of occasions. When finishing my MSLS from UK, many of the professors would employ a wiki to help facilitate conversation and the sharing of ideas. In my Children's literature class, we were expected to keep our own pages on the wiki as a reading journal. Each week we would read various award winners, type a summary, and share our thoughts. In our computer science class, the wiki was employed as more of a "crash support" center. As we would try our various projects (and some parts would inevitably fail), we could share code and correct amongst ourselves...and offer support when things went really wrong.
The video Wikis in Plain English was absolutely right--there is no mass collaboration via email. It is just a mess. As far as comparing wikis, I suppose if you build it, they will come. I do think that people are collaborative by nature, and we enjoy sharing ideas with like-minded individuals. Judging by the Wookieepedia and the like, wikis just streamline the process. I really enjoyed "Library Success"--it was easily to browse by topic, and the information appeared to be pretty top notch.
So let's apply this to our mission statement:
"The Library's mission is to provide the people of Louisville and Jefferson County with the broadest possible access to knowledge, ideas and information, and to support them in their pursuit of learning."
A broad access to knowledge, ideas, and information can be found in wikis. If the wiki were employed as some sort of epic book group, a comment/suggestion forum, a classroom forum for people to discuss what they learned in our various educational endeavors, or any other number of collaborative based projects; we would be advancing our mission statement.
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