Wikis are online web sites that are edited collaboratively, sometimes by the general public, and other times by registered users. The idea of the wiki is that anyone who has information can contribute to the online information hub, and through this grassroots sharing of information, the wiki becomes a valuable info source to its contributors and readers. Wikispace.com is a host for wikis, and someone has created several young adult librarian themed wikis through this free hosting service. You may be interested in checking out the following teen librarian-related wiki sections and spaces:

YA Politics- Has a collection of links related to youth politics.

YA libraries- Has a small collection of ya library links.

YA booklists - contains links to book review web sites by ya librarians or teens.

YA - a page with core teen librarian resources.

Teen Librarian - currently has user-defined book lists, looks like some programming sections are soon-to-come.

Obviously, these wikispaces have a long way to go. Few people have contributed to them, and they aren’t organized well. For example, you can find teen book lists in the booklists section as well as the YA booklists section. Furthermore, there are two wikispaces that have content about teen services. The teenlibrarian wikispace obviously has more of a teen focus than the reference links wikispace, but the reference links wikispaces can be commended for its large amount of user-supplied teen reading lists. Still this is confusing — two places to go. Why don’t the creators of these wikis combine forces?

Another criticism, other than organization, might be the lagging of the wikispace web server. Is that my wireless connection dropping, or is it the wikispace web server that is causing the pages to load slowly? It might be worth it for someone to host a teen librarian wikispace on an ad-free web server, to speed up page loading. But then, you’d have three teen librarian-related wikis to check out. We wouldn’t want that!

Also, what’s up with the look of the wiki? In general, wikis look ugly. Has anyone ever come across a wiki space that looks sharp? Like a user-supplied-content web site with awesome design and graphics? Please show me an example. I want to believe that the wiki can function with a lucrative outfit on. Show me a hot-looking wiki!