Wiki Wacky

You learn something new every day.

I didn't realize that the granddaddy of all wikis, Wikipedia, is something of an anomaly in the wiki world. When I think of the drawbacks of wikis, I think of Wikipedia, which evidently is not typical of the way most wikis are created and used.
Interesting.

One of the things that I must admit I like about Wikipedia is the way it provides access to information that might be considered too trivial or too detailed to be included in a traditionally published source. For example, there used to be a list of Beatles songs arranged by which Beatle sang the lead vocal. I see that has evidently been replaced by a table of Beatles songs that has columns for which album the song appeared on, who wrote it, chart positions in the UK and US, all of which are sortable.

That's a little geeky, but kind of cool at the same time.

One of the ways I tend to use Wikipedia is to get a fast answer to a question that I then turn around and verify in a more authoritative source. I'm having a hard time thinking of an actual example, but it's similar to the way I might do a quick Google search to verify a title or author I'm having trouble producing for a patron, and then go to the catalog or FirstSearch for the final word.

I have long thought that a wiki would be the best way to keep staff up to the minute on library policies and procedures. These things often undergo revisions or even just slight modifications and it isn't easy to keep up with it all, especially for things you don't do every day. I, for example, just cannot seem to remember how long someone has to wait to reorder an ILL that they missed picking up. Procedures for dealing with parts missing or damaged items seem to change all the time. It would be great to have a source to go to that is [presumably] up to date with the latest information, instead of wondering if the email you saved or the memo you found in the file has been superseded by something more recent.

The linking abilities of wikis just make them so flexible. You can capture information that people need to know, but that might not be substantial enough to deserve a full-blown memo or written procedure. Kind of a way to harness the collective wisdom, and bring order to chaos.