Work email and wikis

For the last two or so years, I've used Hotmail as my work email.  A few months ago, all employees at my library got official work emails.  I think that a professional email address is, well, more professional than a Hotmail/Yahoo/Gmail/whatever free email address.  Two weeks ago, for no reason that we've been able to figure out, I and I alone was no longer able to access my email.  Finally today I was able to get access again.  I immediately forwarded all the pertinent messages to my Hotmail, just in case.  Under other circumstances, I wouldn't have worried as much about the problem.  But wouldn't this be the week I have Learning 2.0 homework that can only be accessed from a message in my work email that I can't access?  Figures!  So my homework is a little late but at least I'm getting it done.

The late week's topic was wikis.  Almost everyone has heard of Wikipedia.  Almost everyone uses Wikipedia.  We were given a link to FAQ For Librarians, which I found highly informative.  Until I read this article, I had no idea how accurate Wikipedia was.  The big issue for libraries and researchers about Wikipedia is the fact that absolutely anyone can edit the information in Wikipedia.  That sends up all sorts of red flags because we want the information we pass on to our patrons to be solid.  For this reason, some people won't use Wikipedia and probably never will.  That's sad but each person is entitled to their own opinion, especially when it comes to resources.  When doing any kind of research, I use Wikipedia as a jumping-off point.  I start there, looking for topic-specific terminology and jargon that I may not know about.  I then seek out other resources to verify the information I've found on Wikipedia.  It's always good to have backup.

As for using wikis themselves, they are very useful for having the most comprehensive details necessary for the specific purpose.  I likened Shelfari to a wiki because anyone can edit the information about a title.  In fact, I have done this myself.  The information is then verified by a Shelfari editor.  Anyone with access to a wiki is yet another source of knowledge when information is incomplete.  As the saying goes, "two heads are better than one".  And more than two is even better.

Read on,
Paula