Wikis

"To More Powerful Ways to Cooperate" was enlightening in showing that OCLC might well be on the cutting edge of using, implementing and innovating with Wikis and other Web 2.0 software. That makes sense, as they began as a resource sharing cooperative,which is Web 2.0 at its most basic.

I was surprised that, apparently, OCLC will be opening up WorldCat as a Wiki to anyone with an internet connection. At first glance it sounds like a wonderful idea but I doubt the service will include interlibrary loans and relatively few people outside of libraries and academia would be looking for bibliographic information. I'm curious how they envison this type of wiki being used.

At the risk of being cynical,I don't see OCLC's consideration of public tagging, list creation, citation management and more as a good idea. Wikipedia is riddled with errors and the same fate would befall Worldcat, unless they have something very different in mind that doesn't effect WorldCat itself.

I learned something new from this article! I was not familiar with OpenURLs, so I did some extra reading and found out that, in the simplest terms, they are URLs with bibliographic information included about library holdings, articles and e-information.

The most interesting part of the article to me was the mention of OCLC's
cooperartion with Google in making hardcover books available in full text e-format. Also,I didn't know that Wiki archived copies of every version of each page.

The aspect of Wikis I found the most interesting was its usefulness for several people in different locations to easily collaborate to plan an event, communicate in an organization or create a community guide. Those possibilities never occurred to me.

Wikis and libraries seem made for each other. There are many possibilites in a public library to enrich your patrons' experience , as mentioned in the reading we did for week seven. Patrons could add book reviews to the catalog, groups in community could put information about themselves on the library's website, subject guides could be created and meetings could be planned. Doubtless, someone with a better imagination could think of more!

To sum this week up, I see Wikis as networked computers using specially designed software that enables the public to contribute information, possibly edit contents and communicate with others using the same website. They are dynamic, ever changing and flexible sites that can be adapted to the particular user's needs.