Week 12

Muddiest Point
Dr. He mentioned in his lecture (I think) that search engines filter out duplicate findings. When doing research find the same item listed more than once in the returned list. Why is this? It would cut done on the number of listing one would have to look at.

Wiki’s
A wiki can help manage your library, for example, you can use it to share information among staff or patrons. When information on the wiki is outdated it can be changed easily.
Before wiki’s it was nearly impossible to share and build files effectively in an organization.
There are a number of free wiki’s out there that allow you to build your own wiki; these sites can be upgraded for a fee.
Wiki’s can be used in addition to classroom instruction by providing additional information on a subject.

Jimmy Wales
Jimmy talked about the benefits of wikipedia. His idea is to provide a free encyclopedia to every person on earth.
“Free access to all human knowledge.”
Wikipedia has one paid staff member everyone else is a volunteer. No other organization would be able to afford standby staff. The volunteers monitor all the wiki’s to make sure the information going into a topic is correct.
Wikipedia has 90 servers in a number of different areas.
Wikipedia carries a “neutral point of view” to keep the site from becoming bias.
Review of the new pages are done in reel time review, the pages get reviewed pretty quickly for content validity.
Wikipedia holds people editing the site to high standards.
People with a good knowledge of a subject can vote on pages that should be removed from the site.
The next big thing is wikibooks.

Social tagging sites
Social tags allow you to store bookmark information on a research topic you might be working on online. By saving you bookmarks this way allows others will see what you are searching, and you can see what they are looking at also. This can cut down on your own searches, information can be found by subject headings.