The wonderful world of wikis. I have used Wikipedia a fair amount but had not really explored other wikis until this week. I think wikis are very useful. Wikipedia, for example, is a great tool. When looking for facts and information, Wikipedia is easy to find, easy to use and contains tons of information. There is a downside, of course, and it is huge. Since anyone can contribute information to a wiki, one cannot assume that what is there is completely accurate. I use Wikipedia as a starting place.
Explored the wiki links in this week's assignment. Played with the 'Mfagan wiki' (maps from Waterloo and area) for awhile. There was a UW map that shows the entire campus, plus a list of things you can select (visitor parking, accessible buildings) which are then transposed onto the map. In a few seconds you can have a map of the campus with all the visitor parking places marked clearly. A neat combination of useful online information, customized to meet a specific person's need. However, this site is a good example of how wikis can go wrong. Yes, there is a great collection of maps of the area but there is also lots of unrelated stuff that has nothing to do with mapping. There is an entire section named, 'Businesses, organizations, things to do, etc'. This wiki has morphed into more than it needs to be.
Found the 'Waterloo Way' wiki to be neat and organized. It highlights stories of entrepreneurship in the Waterloo Region. However, another way a wiki has gone wrong. I checked the 'history' tab and found that this site was last updated in May 2007. Yikes. Surely there have been entrepreneurial successes in our Region since then.
This week, I helped a young patron find information on John McCrae's poem, 'In Flanders Fields'. We started at Wikipedia, got some basic info (correct spelling of McCrae's name, date of the poem), then I showed him how to find other sources (websites, books, encyclopedias) to collect more in depth information. The entire interaction took about 5 minutes. He was able to collect the rest of the info by himself. Using Wikipedia to quickly get the most basic info, the search for more was quite easy.
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Wikis are great for communicating and locating quick general information, for your patrons, your research and about your organization. You hit on a really good point though (about there seemingly being no new entrepreneurial businesses opened in the region after May 2007) which is that in order for wikis to be useful, they must be maintained and kept up to date with accurate information.
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