Wikis

I have used Wikipedia a lot in the past and find it useful as a good starting place. Due to lack of controll I would not use it as my only source. Under Disclamers-- It says "Wikipedia cannot guarantee the validity of the information found here." So reader beware. But due to the number of people who have access to it, bogus materials are kept to a minimum by the input of all who access it. The history tab, is interesting showing the development of the entry. It seems there are alot of people out there who have a lot of time on their hands keeping an eye on their favorite subjects. The discussion tab is interesting in showing the talk behind the changes that may or not be commited to the article. I looked up our President Obama and noticed on the Discussion section it had been put on article probation. Interesting. This seems to be a temporary thing. The discussion section gives you a behind the scenes peak at what the people that contributed to the article are thinking.

I like the format with further reading, references and external links. The hyperlinks within the articles are very helpful and fun to enjoy learning a lot more than just the specific search term at the time. I looked up Cartoon. At the beginning of the article it says....

"This article needs additional citations for verification.Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (September 2007)"

This alerts the reader to consider the source when using this entry. It had only one source listed. So it does alert the reader about the relaibility of what is there.

There is a page for Arlington Texas, which gives agood overview of our city. In the external links it would be fun to see how we could get our library as a link.


I created my Wiki with pages for my Family, Fuzzball, and Humor. This was fun to be a creator of something that is actually on the web. I posted a picture of Fuzzball my dog driving. And my favorite cartoon on my humor page. It would be fun to have a page like this for library staff, that other staff could access, to learn more about each other. And provide some access for the public to learn about the staff. This puts a human side to our organization. Or use it for bookclubs or other special programs.

I know this has been rambling but I can see the benefits of this service as another way to spread the word about our library and communicate with our users. I look forward to see what happens at our library.