Wiki Evaluations

In examining the library wikis for this exercise, I must admit that I’m not all too fond of wikis that use the template similar to that of Wikipedia’s. The wikis of St. Joseph County Library, University of Huddersfield, and University of Connecticut Libraries all seem to share this commonality. I never quite got the hang of the built-in search engine which, when you press enter after you enter your keywords, will automatically default to the first hit that pops up, much like Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” button.

The University of Minnesota Libraries sports a more appealing look, though the text colors—particularly for the comments—could use a different color to contrast the site’s background shades of olive green.

I’d be curious to see what WorldCat’s wiki has to offer with its reviews feature. I’m already a fan of their public interface for WorldCat (as opposed to the FirstSearch one). Perhaps this will be a nice alternative to the comments posted in Amazon.com.

Overall, it seems that almost every wiki I encounter is jam-packed with information—multiple postings, categorical links, etc. (that whole information overload issue), which is why I was drawn to Butler University Libraries’ Reference Wiki.