Lesson 9 - Wikis

This, for me, was one of the most interesting lessons. I had used wikipedia but hadn't seen any of the other sites. For new librarians, the website that taught about librarianship was simple to use. I looked at an article about weeding, which is very challenging to someone new in the profession. I agreed with most of what they said, since I do thoroughly weed my elementary school library all the time. I liked what they said about taking a shelf a week to work on.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get into the website on library instruction, which I would have looked at for suggestions on teaching different skills. When you can't get on a site, you don't know if it's your computer, or the fault of the site.
The Bull Run Library site was terrific, much more updated than our public library site, including a video on RSS that I watched for an earlier lesson.
I used the Wiktionary to look up a word from the book I am currently reading, The Great Wide Sea. It was easy to use. When I saw that there was a Wikipedia article, I went to it to see a picture of a bimini. We used to have one on our boat, only I didn't know that is what it's called! I looked up dinghy (which I know) just to see what it would say, and it, again, referred me to Wikipedia. This makes me think that I should just go to that site first, and skip the Wiktionary, unless it's a foreign word or something very unusual and hard to find.
Wikihow could definitely become addictive, because I love to see how people do arts & crafts projects. But there are not enough "how to's" on that site yet to really be helpful. I did look at the article on walking meditation, since I learned how to do that in Thailand at a Buddhist monastery. The article was pretty simplistic and the video was banal. There was a basic explanation, but even I could describe the many steps that we learned in more detail.
I do feel that, for the most part, wikis can be used in public libraries and school libraries, as long as people understand that they are not always reliable or even factual.