Keeping Current with Research

What is a Wiki?

A wiki is a collaborative live document. Essentially it is a collection of webpages that can be edited, manipulated, and commented upon without working through a web editor and transferring files to a web server. There is a communal philosophy of allowing all users to maintain the content contained on the wiki pages.

How Do I Find a Wiki?

Below is a sampling of our own wikis, popular wikis, and a few wiki search engines:

Wikipedia: arguably the most popular wiki in the world, a virtual encyclopedia structured as a wiki

Wikitravel: a project to create a reliable and up-to-date world travel guide

wikiHow: a collaborative project with the goal of building the world's largest how-to manual

How Can I Use Wikis?

There are quite a few sites that allow you to create your own wiki for free.  Here are some to start with:

PBWiki

Wikispaces

MediaWiki

Some wikis allow subscription to updated content via RSS or Atom. For more information on setting up RSS feeds, see the RSS tab.

What is a Blog?

A blog (web log) is a website where journal entries are kept in reverse chronological order. Blogs usually focus on a specific topic and are frequently updated. Most blogs have one author referred to as a "blogger", but there are also group authored blogs. While many blogs are personal in nature, others are news and research related.

How Do I Find a Blog?

There are many news, academic, and research blogs. You might begin your search by looking at some of these sites:

Blogs listed by the Chronicle of Higher Education

ScienceBlogs from the creators of Seed Magazine

History News Network from George Mason University

Technorati

Google Blog Search

How Do I Keep Track of Blog Feeds?

If you are following more than one blog, it can be very time consuming to check each blog daily. To learn how to be notified of all updates in one location, read about how to get a newsreader on the RSS tab.
Last Update: 01 Sep 06:44 | Tagged with: Research Tools Keeping Current Library resources