Monday, June 27, 2011

Things 17 & 18: Contributing to a Wiki and Wikipedia

I have made a brief Wiki for the Sherardian Library on Wikispaces.com, a wikisite which uses a WYSIWYG editor that is similar to the editor on Blogger. The Sherardian Library wiki can be read here, and includes links to the Sherardian Library Twitter and Delicious accounts.

Wikipedia is often a "first stop" resource for researchers (undergraduates and graduates alike!) who find it a useful quick resource. That being said, though, Wikipedia is not authored by experts, so researchers should use it with caution! Wikipedia does "police" its entries, however, through peer-review, and often  provides cautionary warnings on articles which lack appropriate referencing, are incomplete, debated or have poor writing quality.

Net Neutrality, Open Access and the Freedom of Information

There is a lot of discussion about Open Access in research, particularly in the sciences. Sir Mark Walport gave a lecture recently on the impact of Open Access in biomedical research. His lecture can be found here:

Net neutrality is also a hotly-contested issue that may have a great impact on access to information, and is of certain interest to libraries. This blogpost on net neutrality and public libraries may be of interest.