READING WEEK #12

Using a Wiki by Charles Allan

This article stated that library instruction wikis have two chief uses : the sharing of knowledge and the ability to cooperate in creating resources, such as informational handouts and guides. It gave good and clear instructions on how to access commercial sites on the internet and create a wiki. Examples were given of how libraries use wikis to manage information and the development of instructional programs dealing with changing information and gaining independently held bits of knowledge. I have not had the experience of using a wiki at my library but think it would be a good way of communication for our poster projects.

Folkaonomy by Xan Arch
Xan Arch explains the phenomenon of social tagging which allows an individual to create bookmarks (or tags) for Web sites and save them online. Librarians can provide an index to quality Internet resources created by the librarians at their institutions. Librarians and faculty working in a subject area could immediately and easily share sites they find. One must be careful of spam tagging where users with bad intentions can tag unsuitable sites for their own profit or create havoc. Even though a true folksonomy is one without restraints I think there should be some control over the information that is included in sites open for all library patrons.