#4:Wikis

Homework... A wiki allows the non-technically specialised to present information content more immediately, and it can be access and edited remotely. While some are largely unmoderated and depend upon some vague sort of "peer review", restrictions can be arranged to control who edits content.

There seems to be an idealistic thread of philosophy that the wiki assists in the democracising of information and the speed at which information can be delivered. Lori Reed :

"This means that when new information is discovered about a subject, it is quickly added to the collective knowledge base. Unlike a conventional encyclopedia, where editors have to find experts for different subject areas, and nothing gets published without their say-so, anybody can write a wikipedia entry. If you have knowledge about a given subject area, you can write an entry about it. If there is already an entry but it doesn't cover something, you can edit it to add your information".

Everything has a price: the content is immediate but not necessarily authorative, accurate or stable. Libraries have traditionally selected documents based on the reputations of authors and publishers, and depend upon stable content, and the uncontrolled wiki presents a quite different vision of knowledge. Looking at the sample of the library related wikis on the 2.0 list, most have highly controlled content: the medium is different, but the philosophy of selection is pretty much the same.

I can see the value of wikis as procedural documents across divisions or oganisations (in so far as any one really refers to procedural documents!). The wiki would allow all relevent areas to update information and all the information could be centrally located but easy to reference anywhere. The ides of subject guides could be quite good for the beginner but are obviously never going to replace subject headings as a search tool. I'm a bit sceptical that wikis are really community building even if they may be helpful in communicating information to a community.

End homework.