Assignment #9

When I first starting to look at wikis and realized that participants are also the authors of these pages, I thought that the information could not be reliable and the use of wikis is not a resource that I would reccommend to a patron for research purposes. I still feel this way but did find that there were a couple of wikis that I thought would be very useful for me as a librarian and for the public.
For the librarian, Library Success: A best practices wiki is wonderful. If offers a wealth of information for the librarian with links to tons of information and resources for learning. I definitely willl return to this site and make use of the information here.

The format of the the Front Page wiki may be useful for book reviews. I found it to be more of a blog where the participants could state their opinions on a subject.
Another wiki that I found had some merit was the mfagen wiki. This would be very beneficial for an individual planning a road trip or wanting to find where a place was. I liked the way it was broken down by country, county, province etc. I found that there was some replication and possibly a little confusing as it did not give any sort of description of the different map sites or how to use them.
Overall I think that by the examples given for us to look at, it is important to set up a wiki in a way that is user friendly and has pertinent information.

As well, the library success wiki provided links to many sites that provided even further sites for more information. I found that this wiki was more controlled and the content was not as opinion giving as it was providing information links pertinent to the librarian.

Basically, I think that a wiki, if used would have to have controls on the content and someone overseeing the content that is being added to give the wiki some credability.