I think Wikipedia is one of the best forms of web 2.0 tools out there for quick information about anything and everything. Of course it’s not the most authentic source of information, as anyone can contribute and edit a wiki post and the administrators would not be able to keep up with the monitoring of what information is being published. But on the whole, it is a great place to gain knowledge and it’s the first port of call for me if I want to know more about any particular thing. It brings back memories of how heavily my generation relied on digital encyclopedias such as Microsoft Encarta and how much things have changed now; Encarta’s premium version had 62.000 articles. Wikipedia has 3.2 million english articles, 15 million in total!

I have contributed to a few articles in the past (I started the article based on a ‘Spoken Word’ Poet named Brother Dash some time ago) but haven’t done any more than that. I had a look at the Oxford web 2.0 Wiki, in particular the case studies section for the libraries. I noticed that the Sainsbury Library made use of the main tools in web 2.0 and also that the Bodleian Law Library was also making great use of the tools available to them. I saw that the SSL page was up-to-date to the best of my knowledge, so I couldn’t contribute anything further to it.

In general I think it is a useful way for libraries to collaborate with each other and see how people are implementing web 2.0 tools in their own libraries. But I have to say i’m not too sure about the layout of wetpaint for Wiki pages, as the adverts are too distracting and makes the overall appearance of the pages look shoddy. Maybe another platform would be a better option?