> Nevertheless, I think we all have to face facts: people will use
> Wikipedia
> because it's easy and free and up to date, and people will just ignore
> anybody who says, "Don't use Wikipedia!!!" ......
> Why don't librarians go where our users are and try to get involved in
> Wikipedia? Facebook is very popular, but I don't believe libraries
> have had
> much luck with institutional Facebook pages. It seems that using
> Wikipedia
> may be better. How could we do it? I'm not sure, but there could be
> many,
> many, many topics where librarians could point to our materials and
> sites.
> We could point to our research guides, or all kinds of resources.
> Who knows
> what people would come up with?
An interesting example of working with, not against, Wikipedia can be
found on the stunning BBC Wildlife Finder site: http://www.bbc.co.uk/wildlifefinder/
- A page for every animal, habitat, adaptation, ecozone etc.
supported by some amazing video, but I digress...
The BBC use Wikipeadia to supply supplementary information for their
site. *Use* being the operative word here, they don't 'just' link out
to it, as they make clear in their faq: http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/faq
"By incorporating content from Wikipedia we can offer good quality
background information across the breadth of natural history content,
while focusing on bringing unique content online..... ...At the BBC
we are not only using the content that is already published on
Wikipedia, but also improving those articles and creating new ones
where none exist. This should improve bbc.co.uk, Wikipedia and any
other site that uses Wikipedia."
A lesson in fighting the 'not invented here' syndrome, and using the
most appropriate way to improve your own service whilst also bringing
benefit to the wider world.
~Richard.
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Received on Mon Oct 26 2009 - 07:45:21 EDT