♪..A Wac shared her wiki with a naughty Marine..♪ (An homage to Mother and Barbara)

When wikis are monitored by editors, or even patrolled by non-users (through rating systems, etc.), I like them very much. I'm not such a huge fan of Wikipedia, because I think people rely on it more than they ought to (misguidedly expecting it to be more factual than it sometimes is), but I have a great respect for certain other wikis, and I think they could be useful for libraries.

I don't know what I thought of the provided library wikis. A lot of them seemed outdated, and I wonder how frequently they get used? I'm also not entirely sure what all of them were supposed to be. The Bull Run Library one? Not sure about the purpose of that. The Library Outreach one? Felt like a shared workspace more than anything else--or was that what it was supposed to be?

If someone could arrange for a patron's card number to serve as their login--to ensure that only valid library-cardholders had access to editing a library-sponsored wiki--I think that a library wiki could be very successful. It could provide a forum for discussion about books and the sharing of opinions and recommendations. Or can wikis--or wiki features--be combined with existing sites? Would be any way in Pamunkey to combine a wiki with PamCat?--so that, when a patron is logged in as him/herself, s/he can write reviews of library materials either from the account summary screen or just the browse screen. I don't know anything about programming--like, even HTML stumps me sometimes--but I wonder if there would be a way for patrons to tag books and make the tags searchable? I guess that would be along the lines of opening the record to patrons... And I wonder if patrons could offer suggestions about further reading? And the suggestions could link to other records in the catalog... kind of like the "Customers who bought this also bought..." feature on Amazon.

At any rate, I think that a wiki would be one of the more useful "Web 2.0" features that a library could employ.

My favorite wiki (non-library) is the user-edited, reader-rated, pop-culture dictionary found at UrbanDictionary.com. Is there a slang term with an alternate meaning you didn't know? Look it up in UrbanDictionary! People around you raving about the newest Internet craze, and you feel foolish not knowing what they're talking about? Do some research at UrbanDictionary! Did you just get a slur hurled your way and don't know how to react? Figure out your response with UrbanDictionary!

UrbanDictionary allows users to add their own words/phrases and definitions, as if it were a standard dictionary. Any one term might have as many as 25 authors writing definitions for it, but the merit of a definition can be easily judged by how many "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" votes it has. Any reader can give it a rating; if you agree with the definition or find it helpful, give it a thumbs-up. If you disagree or know the definition to be false (or the examples are terrible), give it a thumbs-down. The top-rated definition appears at the top of the page. Also, a lot of terms have different meaning or connotations, and different authors will provide different insight. You can peruse the various definitions and determine which one fits the scenario you're in. (Just like a regular dictionary, considering a word's context clues is vital. Example: "No one knows this, but I was actually a Chegwidden/Mac shipper during the run of 'JAG.'"* What does this mean? Do you know what a "shipper" is? If not, click here. Scroll down to Entry 5. Which definition seems the most appropriate, Entry 1 or Entry 5? Based on ratings, which meaning of the term is the most common one?)

There are also tagging features at UrbanDictionary to help you search for and connect to related terms, and if an author references another entry, s/he can link the new contribution to the other term. (To follow up on the "shipper" example, look at the definition of fanfiction. Within the first entry, there are direct links to the terms "fandom," "het," "slash," "AU," "blog," and "zine." Considerate authors will have linked their entries so you can easily define terms you've never heard of before; just click on the linked term, and you'll go straight to that UrbanDictionary entry!)

In general, I think wikis are helpful tools and good ways to open channels of communication among different people. They can create communities where there otherwise were none, and they allow for the free sharing of ideas. I think their validity and usefulness is increased when someone ultimately has the authority to edit and monitor available information--like on UrbanDictionary, there are editors, and a lot of freedom is given to the public so that one can consider the "general consensus" definition of a term. (See wikiality.) So yes, wikis have a place in the future of libraries... as long as we're smart about how we use them.




*For the record, this is so not true.