10 Things On A Stick

Wiki wiki wiki goes the DJ!

Seriously, our library has been using an internal wiki for roughly a year now, with great success. The flow of information has improved dramatically (here's what you missed at the meeting, this is where the workshop is being held, this is a photo of who got arrested last night in the lobby, etc.)

The main challenge I've found (including myself, embarassingly enough) is that old habits die hard. It is far more efficient to search the wiki for the answer to the patron's query but even I, youngster net nerd, must stifle the urge to ask my boss or pick up the phone as first resort.

My theory is the socializing aspect of work. We want to "appear" helping, we want to move around, we want to talk to our co-workers, etc. Or maybe it's just me, I dunno really.

One way to get around editing wars syndrome is to make people partially identify themselves, i.e. the 23 Things On A Stick blog I just slightly edited. When you allow people freedom but not anonymous freedom, they miraculously tend to be a heckuva lot more polite. I love the idea of letting the public help us with wikis: book reviews, info on upcoming high school sports, restaraunt reviews, etc. It's like a free newspaper that everyone can contribute to. Perhaps the answer is not more internet terminals but just taking the existing intranet terminals we use for card catalog searches and allowing patrons more intranet wiki access points.

All that said, I fully support academics not allowing students to cite Wikipedia as a source because everyone knows it is not a reliable source. Unless your paper is on Dr. Who or something dorky like that. What Wikipedia excels at is being an excellent jumping off point. I would tell students, provided I was an accredited teacher and not a check out desk clerk, would be to click on the sources cited portion because those are *usually* gold mines.