Another great Lee LeFever video (I recommend the Social Media in Plain English video as a complement to this entire 23things exercise) and an interesting look at a thorny topic: Wikis.
Wikipedia is the bane of many teachers and librarians, but so many people use it, because honestly for somethings we are willing to trade veracity for convenience in the same way that we trade security for convenience when we have the computer remember our passwords or set our PIN numbers to 1234. If the information doesn't matter *that* much to you, getting it from a wiki is not a big deal. From what I find when researching things for myself, if I have an easily navigable vetted source for the information I'll turn to it, but if I have no idea where to even begin looking and it's not a matter of life or death I'll trust Wikipedia. It's like having a really smart friend that is overwhelmingly right, but makes mistakes occasionally. Having an incorrect understanding of the origin of pizza won't affect my life in any measurable way, and if I realize that it might, such as if I decided to become a pasta historian, then I know enough to know that I need a better source.
Wikipedia is the duct tape of knowledge... it's good enough for right now.
I can really see wiki functionality shining in areas such as the OPAC where patrons could review and rate materials and add tags that catalogers with limited time and mountains of items pending processing might miss. The OCLC open OPAC which was linked from one of the wiki articles this week did a good job of highlighting this.
I should also mention I played with our own Wiki, which is a collection of employee favorites. It would be neat to set up a staff Wiki to share best practices and coordinate more inter-branch publicity maybe.
That's all for now, I'm working on this at work for a change and the reference desk needs me. :)
Also I got an employee recognition award today. Go me!
5 comments:
Congrats on the ERA!
Congrats on being recognized as an employee. It's about time they acknowledged that.
P.S. Ebullient Propinquity...umm...you're happy to be near me?
"Wikipedia is the duct tape of knowledge... it's good enough for right now."
Wise words, oh wiki one. For some questions, an accurate answer is not vital. Which is one reason that some subjects may not be addressed by reputable sources. They just don't matter that much. And if they do matter, Wikipedia will often give us ideas on how to pursue the search at length.
Don't tell anyone, but there are even questions asked by library patrons where the answers just don't matter.
"Wikipedia is the duct tape of knowledge... it's good enough for right now."
To quote an episode of Family Guy. "That is the smartest thing I have ever heard anyone say about anything ever."
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