Week 7: Wikis

"Did you know that Janis Joplin speed walked everywhere
and was scared of toilets?"
30 Rock, January 22, 2009
Frank, editing Janis Joplin's Wikipedia page

Anyone can edit (some) wikis: both the beauty and the danger of wikis! When they aired this 30 Rock episode, Wikipedia reportedly had an advance heads-up and locked down the Joplin page against edits. The plot, for those who do not watch the show (what? you don't watch 30 Rock?) involved Jenna getting into character for playing Joplin in a biopic, and Frank tricking her into all kinds of crazy behavior by editing the Wikipedia page.

I would practice on the CHPLearning wiki, except my brain just cannot handle creating another account right now. Wikis are wonderful tools for personal and professional use. There are many reasons I can think of for libraries to create and use wikis, not the least of which is our already much-used and appreciated CHPL Programming Wiki. There are tons of resources on there, including all of the files you need to teach any of our computer classes.

It is, probably, a pretty good idea to have control over who has permission to edit your wiki.