Most of us are familiar with the term Wiki, and some of us have even used Wikipedia and other Wikis, but what does Wiki mean? Well, wikiwiki is a Hawaiian work for “quick”. A wiki is an online site that anyone can access and edit, allowing users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser. Wiki supports hyperlinks and has a simple text syntax for creating new pages and crosslinks between internal pages on the fly. Wiki is unusual among group communication mechanisms in that it allows the organization of the content to be edited in addition to the content itself.

Thus, Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. You may have noticed glaring mistakes in Wikipedia. Don’t be afraid to sign on and correct the mistakes! That’s the whole nature of Wikipedia. It’s an encyclopedia for all of us. By the same token, Wikipedia is not considered authoritative since anyone at all can edit it and is therefore not a good source for important research nor for citations.

There are many other wiki’s online. You can see a list of some of the largest wikis out there . You may wish to take a look at:

Wikitravel - a “project to create a free, complete, up-to-date, and reliable world-wide travel guide.”,

LyricWiki - where you can find song lyrics by artist, album, song, genre, hometown, label or language,

Wiktionary - a multilingual dictionary including definitions, etymologies, pronunciations, sample quotations, synonyms, antonyms and translations. As I write this blog, the site contains 491,731 entries in 389 languages,

TV IV - a “compendium of television knowledge where you can search by all programs or by your favorite type(s ) of program such as drama, comedyand reality. It also contains a glossary, ratings and DVD releases,

ArmchairGM - you can read, write and discuss sports and rate players, teams, and sporting events,

PortalNews - a sports news site.

Wikimovies - a totally free movie database that welcomes all users. Its aim is to collect as much information and as mamy facts about all movies as possible. The information may be actors with biographies and filmographies, soundtracks with information about the authors, lyrics and release dates and many more. In additional to all textual information, Wikimovies contains multimedia data like photos, galleries, trailers etc.

You can create your own Wiki too. You will need to use a Wiki engine. There are several places where you can do that including PeanutButterWiki (according to Google "as easy as a peanut butter sandwich", Socialtext, Wetpaint, and Wikia. See the Top Ten Wiki Engines. Try one out!

And take a look at our library's Wikinomics: how mass collaboration changes everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams.