Wikis

I'm a big fan of wikis, especially Wikipedia. I know that some people don't think that it's a reliable source of information: the articles do vary in quality and authority but it is a good starting point, and many of the better entries have many citations to follow up on. A couple of years ago, I was researching Amelia Island as a possible place for a vacation home. I had never been there but it sounded great. I had started my research by searching Florida hurricane statistics, county by county, to see which place had had the fewest hurricanes in the past hundred years, and one of the places that came up was Nassau County. I found a lot of nice pictures and quite a bit of information about the area on the Internet and in magazine articles. I finally went there for a long weekend and it was everything that I had read and seen in photos, but what none of the websites or articles had mentioned was that that there is a pulp mill right outside of town, and there is no getting away from it (especially in Fernandina Beach!) If I had gone to Wikipedia at the beginning, I would have found that out right away! Oh well, the search goes on ... !



Other wiki stuff: I used the "Library Success : a best practices wiki" recently to find out more about IM Reference and Meebo, in particular. It was very helpful, since we just started using Meebo here at LCPL. I also like "Subject Guides" such as the ones that can be found on the "SJCPL Subject Guides" site. ( SJCPL Subject Guides ) The "Cooking" and "Antiques" guides are especially fun. Also, these guides serve as online pathfinders and can be very useful in a library setting.