Week 7, Thing 16 - Wikis

The term Wiki comes from the Hawaiian word "wiki wiki" which means quick. A wiki is a kind of website that is written collaboratively and that multiple people can edit easily and quickly. The most popular wikis are "Wikipedia" and "E-How". Anyone can contribute to a wiki. The only catch is that some wikis require users to register before you can add or edit any content. Libraries across the country are using wikis. For example, the Princeton Public Library in NJ has a booklovers wiki. The idea is that users can post reviews of their favorite books. This is a great use of a wiki. I think that more libraries should use wikis to interact more with customers. If BCPL developed a wiki for our "Books and More" webpage then customers could post reviews of their favorite books. It would be a virtual reader's advisory. Even though I am a fan of wikis, I do believe there has to be some approval before allowing a customer to add content to our webpage. If there is no approval we could have content that is objectionable or offensive to some customers. As a library we have the right to provide information to all of our customers.