Breaking Legs Behind My MLISc Project

I am doing project on Wikis used in Libraries.

Wiki is one of the tools used in Web 2.0.

Web 2.0 mainly focused on the ability of people to collaborate and share information Online.

Web 2.0 features are:

1. Communication with an emphasis on web based communities of users.

2. Communication of users, and open sharing of Information.

Web 2.0 Technologies are:

I. Blogs
Short for Web log, A blog is a Web page that serves as a publicly accessible personal diary that is posted on the Internet. Blogs often reflect the personality of the author.

II. Social Network:-

The interaction between a group of people who share a common interest.

III. RSS:-

It stands for Rich Site Summary or RDF Site Summary or Real Simple Syndication. RSS is an XML-based summary of a web site, usually used for syndication and other kinds of content-sharing. There are RSS “feeds” which are sources of RSS information about web sites, and RSS “readers” which read RSS feeds and display their content to users.

IV. Folksonomy:-

The spontaneous cooperation of a group of people to organize information into categories also known as collaborative tagging, social classification, social indexing, and social tagging.

V. Wiki

To begin, I am not clear about my topic. I have so many questions on wikis. Below I have mentioned some of my questions and found answers, while searching literature which are as follows:

1. What is wiki?

Wiki is a Hawaiian term for "quick" or "super-fast". The idea of a wiki was first coined by Ward Cunnigham in 1995.

According to Wikipedia "a wiki is type of web site that allows the visitors themselves to easily add, remove and otherwise edit and change some available content, some times without the need for registration. The ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for collaborative authoring".

2.What are the Characteristics of Wikis?

Some of the characteristics are:-

a. Collaborative Writing:-

The term collaborative writing refers to projects where written works are created by multiple people together rather than individually.

b. Open editing:-

Any one with a browser can read a wiki site. Any one with a web browses can edit, undo any changes at any time.

c. Easy Linking

Its primary function is to allow for easy linking between wikis.

d. Always a work in progress

e. Tools are simple, quick and inexpensive.

3. What is the use of Wikis in Libraries?

Libraries use wikis to spread their content online. Wikis present more potential to most libraries.

The most well known wiki is the Online Encyclopedia, That is Wikipedia

4.Popular wiki software's are:

a. Mediawiki : It is a web based wiki software application used by all projects of the wikipedia foundations.

b. pbwiki:- (PeanutButterWiki) PBwiki is a commercial wiki website.

c. Seedwiki:- Seedwiki is a site where everyone is a contributor. The basicwiki service on seedwiki is free, because "free" access to essential to the power of a wiki.

d. Wetpaint:- Wetpaint is a company that provides social network service and wiki hosting service (or wiki farm). Wetpaint was founded in October 2005.

e. Wikispaces:- Wikispaces is a hosted service that lets you create a wiki for collaborative working.

Now I am 90% clear about wikis. I found out answers for some of my questions, but still more questions arising day by day.