[Air-L] The Wiki: An Environment For Scholarly Conversation and Publishing

[McKiernan, Gerard [LIB]]

Colleagues/

I recently had the opportunity to give a brief presentation at the
_Science in the 21st Century: Science, Society, and Information_
conference that was held at the Perimeter Institute of Theoretical
Physics in Waterloo, Canada, last week.

ABSTRACT

The Wiki: An Environment For Scholarly Conversation and Publishing

"The Medium Is The Message ... The Audience Is The Content."

Marshall McLuhan. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New
York: McGraw-Hill, 1964.

A "wiki is a ... collaborative space ... because of its total freedom,
ease of access, and use, [and] simple and uniform navigational
conventions ... ." "[It] ... is also a way to organize and cross-link
knowledge ..." Ward Cunningham, Father of The Wiki (Leuf and
Cunningham, 2001, 16). Most wikis provide the user with a set of
navigation or utility tools such as the ability to create and edit a
page, view recently changed pages, and rollback to previous page
versions. In addition, many wikis include a discussion forum for
proposed page changes.

Among its many perceived benefits are its potential for facilitating a
more creative environment and expanding knowledgebase, and a
significant ability to harness the power of diverse point-of-views in
creating collaborative works.

In this presentation, we will speculate on the Wiki as a digital
environment that not only supports current scholarly practices, but
more importantly, offers a framework for their enhancement and
transformation.

A Link To The PPT (2003) and >>Various A/V Recordings<< Of The
Presentation Are Available At

[ http://tinyurl.com/5o6wzs ]

>>>Please Feel To Comment About The Presentation<<<

Enjoy!!! // Happy Monday!

/Gerry

Gerry McKiernan
Associate Professor
Science and Technology Librarian
Iowa State University Library
Ames IA 50011

gerrymck at iastate.edu

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