From a reference stand-point I'm of two minds about wikis. On the one (good) hand I have found really useful information on wikipedia, for example, even for students who aren't allowed to use this as a resource. It's a great jumping off point when you have no knowledge of a subject. And since we can't all know everything, it's beyond helpful that someone who is truly an expert on some esoteric subject can easily share that knowledge with others.
On the other (bad) side, I understand teachers' decisions not to allow wikis as legitimate research resources just because ANYONE can post ANYTHING that may or may not be accurate. It's the same reason teachers were initally reluctant to allow web usage at all--no guarantee of reviewed, reliable, juried information, and often no authorship declared. Of course on a wiki inaccurate info. can be quickly corrected by anyone who spots it, but how do you know where you've enetered the process--when the bad info. is there or after it is corrected?
I can see a wiki as an option for sharing book reviews as these are known opinion pieces anyway, but what about as a resource for purely factual information? Can I depend on the community wiki to list an event with the correct time and date, or to be timely in the case of a change? What's to stop a prankster from seeing how many people he can assemble for a non-event? Hmmm...
Ok, enough biblio-babble--or wiki-babble for now, but this is an issue close to the heart of reference librarians so we bat it around a lot! And I'll bet it's more than you bargained for in Week 4, Step 5!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment