Thing 10 - Wikis

Let me say this again...I love the Common Craft videos! They are such fun and are informative at the same time. :)

I have used a wiki before with other librarians at my old job. It was a good place to share ideas for library instruction, and also to have a place for fun and funny links for our breaks. The issue I saw with it was that it was well-used at its inception, but this dropped off steadily as time went on. We all enjoyed it for a while, but then only 1 or 2 people actually added to it or visited it. So it was under-utilized.

I see Wikipedia as a wonderful place to get research started. Most articles have bibliographies so people can look to reliable (hopefully!) sources on the topic. When I was working in an academic library, I steered most students away from Wikipedia, since they were not willing to go the extra mile & check the info they got here against other resources. This is the key to using this open encyclopedia in my book. Users need to be prepared to verify the information they get here in other places, since ANYONE can make changes to any article.