Week Seven, Thing 13 : Wikis

I watched the Cobert Report clips first. He makes the dangers of unquestioning reliance of Wikis clear, given the ease of manipulating such collaborative knowledge sources. Contributors may come to a wiki with maximum biases and/or minimal knowledge, and change entries to reflect their own distorted perceptions of reality. And yet, as Wikipedia's founder indicates when Colbert interviews him in one of the clips, "vandalism" (disingenuous alteration of entries to diliberately distort the truth about a subject) is discouraged, and the perpetrators often banned, so Wikipedia is not a "lawless" free-for-all filled with gross distortions. Nonetheless, I think Colbert is right to highlight the need for caution in consulting Wikipedia. I think Middleburry College's History Department is likewise wise to ban Wikipedia citation in papers and exams (Source: New York Times.) It's not that Wikipedia isn't useful. It's that it's not authoritative. It appears that it contains enough internal checks and balances to make most of the entries reasonably accurate, most of the time. But, this is insufficient to make it a truly reliable, final, definitive source of knowledge.

While Wikipedia is a worldwide resource with worldwide authorship, the library Wikis referenced in this week's excercise are more limited in scope and usership. This is not a drawback by any means, but simply a difference that suits them to different sorts of tasks from those for which one might consult Wikipedia. I focused on the library wikis linked under Collaborations between Library Staff and Patrons. In my opinion, the best of them are The Children's Series Binder and The St. Joseph County Public Library Subject Guide. The Children's Series Binder fulfills a very specialized need simply and quickly, showing parents, librarians, and anyone else who may be interested, what children's book series and titles-within-series exist. Series are broken down by broad headings (eg, "Animals," "Historic Fiction," "Books Based on Movies") which seems really useful for finding the right book series depending on an individual child's interests. The Joseph County Public Library Subject Guide is impressive in its organization and integration of printed and online resources in the listings for each subject area. This Wiki is by no means exhuastive, but it is instantly relevent, showing periodicals and books available at the library, as well as online resources with both local and worldwide reach. I find this latter characteristic particularly welcome. For instance, on the page for Arts and Entertainment, the wiki provides links to local museum and music venue websites, along with links to nationally and internationally renowned institutions like the Louvre. It also highlights arts magazines held within the library.

The wikis I found less impressive were disappointing in their "outsourcing" of information. That is, rather than highlighting what the library itself holds on a subject, or directing the user to rich online resources on the specific subject in question, some simply linked to JSTOR or another such aggregator. While JSTOR is certainly a useful resource, it is too vast to belong on a subject guide, unless it is accompanied by dozens of specific, direct links to relevent information as well. A useful subject-guide wiki needs contributors to point the user towards multiple, diverse, but specific resources. Otherwise, it seems, it's just a generalized catalog or search engine, not a collaborative resource bestowing the user with the benefits of others' experiences.