WIKI

I logged on to the South Dakota Library challenge today to see if I was behind. I haven't looked at it for awhile--busy time of the year. I was pleased to find out I wasn't too far behind. I looked at the lesson about Wikis and went to a few of the sites. I am familiar with Wikis but never really knew how they worked. I know from experience that the Wiki the students use at school, the encyclopedia, is often full of partial or misinformation, however it is a good place to start. After I read up on Wkis I realized why the site the students use is full of partial and misinformation. It is user driven. So, that is the advantage and also the disadvantage of Wikis. On the American Library Assoication web-site there is a Wiki for the upcoming Mid-Winter Conference in Denver. I will be attending that so I was interested to see what was on there. Now I understand why some of the areas in the schedule are filled in and others are not. The advantage of using Wikis for this type of information is that it can be changed quickly and easily, added to by people responsible for the event and easily accessed.
I saw on one web-site a Wiki that had been vandalized--the disadvantage. I guess people had changed information or added information inappropriate to the site. Even though this is a disadvantage there are ways to insure this does not happen--securing the site with registration is one way.
All in all Wikis are fun, useful tools to share information quickly and easily.