Social Intelligence

After reading the various articles for this week and watching Amanda’s slide show I went investigating the variety of wikis in the virtual realm and they are vast in number and diverse in content. I would definitely add Medpedia to a list of resources for a professional library at a hospital whether it served only doctors or whether it was a library that served both patients and medical personnel. I sent the link to a friend as she has been doing some personal research and I felt it was a wiki that she would find useful.

When I got the wiki for the book club, I shared with Mum and she asked me to send her the link so I did. I like the idea of using wikis to connect with patrons and with my colleagues as well as maybe for the occasional personal project such as planning a trip. I have been into anime in the last few years so went to find a wiki on this topic and can suggest Anime-Wiki.org http://en.anime-wiki.org/ This wiki would be of use to those starting an anime collection at their libraries as well as those with an interest in area like me or questions about what anime is.

 I think that the age of the expert is certainly not over by any means it just must now share the spotlight with collaborative knowledge sources as well and one should no longer be taken as significantly more authoritative than the other. Expertise is now just coming from a variety of sources that may not initially have been considered legitimate. If say you use Wikipedia for a source as part of your research then you should make sure that you have a number of other more academic or traditional sources to back it up. It is important to be able to verify information found or enlarge your argument into one that can be taken seriously regardless of who is reading and evaluating it.

Some of the wiki sources that I located about gardening took this idea to heart by connecting with experts from the universities and botanical gardens as well as references and tips from everyday gardeners who were sharing their successes and failures with the wider world of green and black thumbs out there. I chose three wikis for Canadian gardeners particularly people wanting to plant in British Columbian ground.

http://www.garden-wiki.org/ Garden Wiki is organized by what you are growing such as garlic. Under Favourites it has a nice selection of links to other useful sites.

http://www.gardenology.org/wiki/Main_Page This plant and garden encyclopedia includes plenty of pretty pictures and both the latin names and the common ones as well as information about different species.

http://www.greengardenista.com/blog/?p=1368 A gardening  wiki with a central blog which has a large amount of useful information and is entertaining to boot.

I also went in search of some woodworking wikis for my dad, who is in the middle of setting up his workshop and is hoping to create some useful and wonderful masterpieces for their new home. These wikis were interesting in their layouts as one was organized by the tool you would use for a project and another was organized by the projects that you might create.

http://woodwork.wikia.com/wiki/Woodworking_Wiki This woodworking wiki can be searched by pages on handtools, powertools, types of wood, and projects. A great general wiki that is easy to navigate.

http://woodworkerszone.com/wiki/index.php?title=WoodworkersZone_WoodWiki:Community_Portal This site allows woodworkers to read articles of interest, take part in a forum, and go to a mentors section for one on one help.

The wikis I have chosen to highlight this week are appropriate for public libraries and not areas in which litigation would be an issue. I will continue to look for information people and send appropriate note re:reliability and other possible sources.