Wikis

I think wikis can be successful in any situation where people need to share information (which is pretty much everywhere). During meetings with the library's Student Core Leaders, the topic of creating a wiki has come up many times. In fact, a PB Wiki was started by one of our students a couple of semesters ago: http://pollak.pbworks.com/ . Unfortunately, this wiki never really took off. The wiki that has been discussed in the SCL meetings would be one that has bits of information that would helpful to those who work at public desks and need to find information that might not be readily available on the library's website. For instance, the location of a fax machine on campus. This is a question that comes up a lot at the public service desks during certain times of the year. Not everyone knows that there is a fax machine in the TSU. It had come up at a reference meeting, but students from Circ and Titan Card weren't aware of that. Also, it would be helpful if people could post questions to the wiki, so others could answer them in a forum where everyone could see the answers.

I think that wikis have had positive and negative effects on information seeking. On the positive side, they make it possible for everyone to contribute to information, making it a more democratic process. Some subjects, particularly pop culture things (video games, subcultures, wizard rock) may not be studied and written about by academic "experts", or are but not in a way that their target audience is interested it. Lay people who are experts on these subjects as a user or participant can publish information that is relevant and reliable on a wiki. Also, academics may not use the same terminology that an everyday user uses, so their information might not be as accessible. The negatives are also kind of obvious. There is no standardization of terminology, which can lead to too much "stuff" and can be frustrating. Also, anyone can edit a wiki page, making them a forum for subjective information. The hard part is getting people, particularly students, to understand that they must think critically when taking information from wikis, particularly wikipedia. Some people still believe that if something is on a website, it must be true.