Wikis

I'll be the first to admit I've never really understood the purpose of wikis. To me a wiki seemed like a project that could easily become a disaster. BUT after looking at some of the wiki's out on the web I realized that there are certain types of wikis that can be very useful.

While researching various wikis I was pleasantly surprised at how many health and medical related wikis there are out there. Some for professional audiences and others for patients. I like the fact that there are a lot of wikis about a variety of different topics. I can see them being useful to a number of different audiences. My biggest concern with wikis is the accuracy of the information they present. Since wikis are out on the web it seems like anyone can put one up with false information. I think people need to be cautious when looking for wikis and understand the nature of wikis before they join or follow them.

That being said, I discovered a wiki of particular interest while reading an article for another class. The wiki was created by Kelly Smith at Eastern Kentucky University Libraries as a means to track perpetual access to electronic resources. I am a collection resources librarian so this wiki had a lot of useful information for me. If anyone is interested in checking it out here is the link: http://preservingelectronicresources.pbwiki.com/

After doing a little more research on wikis I think I have softened my feelings toward them a bit. I can definitely see the benefit of using them with collaborative projects at work. This is something that I would like to investigate further.

I do have a question though, does anyone know if can you load documents on to wikis, like Word or Excel documents and edit them through a wiki?