Whistling through Wiki

With Wiki's being 'level playing fields' thus allowing anyone to add content and edit, this brings about both positive and negative aspects. As discussed in the papers however, it is a great way for everyone to be able to contribute and feel as if they can have a say, and a 'share of the power'.

I'm fairly new to Wiki's and must admit, am not completely sold on them yet. However, it is interesting to see many of the overseas public libraries using Wiki as a tool for book reviews and encouraging their youth to take part and contribute.

Through the article "Library Success: A best practices wiki" I browsed some of the teenage book reviews. Firstly I was amused by some of the names given to the sites...but taking first prize for me was "Booksnog". Then I noticed that many of the sites I looked at only consisted of reviews from the library staff and the youth had not participated as yet which was not very encouraging. However I was not disappointed when I found Homer Township Public Library and there were an array of book reviews to read that had been written by their teenage patrons. My personal favourite was this one:

Anonymous said...
Prom by Laurie Anderson.
I would not recommend this book. Laurie Anderson is usually a phenomenal writer. She was unable to capture emotion or feeling in this book.

I just love the candidacy of this review!!

Unfortunately the 'Using a wiki for information services: principles & practicalities' by Peter Blake was not working this morning, but I will go back to it for a quick squizz at a later date...