Wikis and Googledocs

Here's the biggest open secret in the reference world: Reference librarians use Wikipedia. Whenever I'm trying to help my daughters with a paper on some subject I'm not familiar with, I end up on Wikipedia and they say, "Mom, we CAN'T use Wikipedia!" Of course, they can't--their teachers tell them expressly NOT to.

But, here's the thing. If you're at the reference desk and a patron asks a question about something of which you have only a passing knowledge, you will almost certainly google a keyword, then navigate to the Wikipedia reference that will surely appear on your first page of results. Say you don't even have a passing knowledge about what the patron is asking you, but it seems like THEY know what they're talking about, again it's Google and Wikipedia. True, it's not the most reliable source, but it is one way to get a feel for which direction to go to find more information on a subject.

Google Docs is pretty neat. We in the Social Committee just used it recently as a different method of communicating with everyone in the committee. It keeps all the information in one place. I can see where this would be a useful tool for business purposes or even for a busy family to keep track of schedules.