Wikis

My previous experience/impression of wikis came from googling something to do with Doctor Who, and coming across a wiki with minutely detailed episode guides and character summaries for (apparently) every creature who ever had a second of screen time, or was even obliquely referred to. Ditto with Harry Potter.

Still, I had a good browse over the Oxford Web2.0 wiki, and made a couple of pedantic updates.

Adventures in Wikipedia were much more interesting, as I was unsurprised to see that the revision history of the 'Israel' article has multiple revisions every day, and that people were even getting into arguments in the notes which give the reason for revision.

I use Wikipedia quite a lot, either for an introduction to something about which I know absolutely nothing (or have never even heard of), or for basic facts about something. For these tasks, it's ideal (though I sometimes want corroboration from other sites once I think I've found the answer I want). However, looking at the pages for my own 'specialist subjects', I can see its problems. Everything present on the page for All Souls is factually correct, there are a lot of important things which should be mentioned and aren't, and it doesn't really represent either the history or the current state of the college very well at all.

Similarly, the people who wrote the article on Ben Jonson clearly haven't read my masters thesis. (And to stop you leaping to Wikipedia, suffice to say he was a friend of Shakespeare and mainly known for his plays) he Understandably, there was a lot about the plays and masques and bit about the poems, but nothing about how they were printed and his unusual involvement in every detail of the process from the quartos onwards, or even the significance of the First Folio. Similarly, there was very little about the intellectual and literary culture he was operating within, and his aspirations for drama as a genre. In short, the article is biased towards providing what people are looking for.

I realise that this might seem an odd thing to say - that's what wikipedia is for, isn't it?! - but it seems wrong that all someone looking at this article gets are the basic facts that an A-level student reading The Alchemist or Volpone wants to fill out their essay. The encyclopaedic presentation of Wikipedia strongly implies that it is authoritative, and whilst readers might be aware that they should check their facts in other sources (I corrected a statement that one masque was lost, when it was actually rediscovered several years ago), they wouldn't realise that there are highly significant facets of Jonson's life and work which aren't even mentioned.

Collective wisdom is a powerful tool indeed, but we have specialists for a reason. I have to confess that I hadn't really thought about the limitations of Wikipedia until I looked at the entries for things I already knew about and could see not just what is wrong, but what is missing.

I certainly won't stop using it - how else could I find out in under 10 seconds who Barry Crocker is ("a popular Australian singer, with a crooning vocal style"), or confirm my suspicion that Tweededum and Tweedledee are only in Through the Looking-Glass, not in Alice in Wonderland? - but I will be more wary in future.

Twitter

I was looking forward to this Thing; Twitter is mentioned so often that I was intrigued to see what the fuss is about. To be honest, though, I've been disappointed. I've found other trainees to follow and a couple of other people/things, but apart from the same sorts of status updates I get from facebook, I haven't gained a lot from it, nor have I felt the pull that leads people to become hooked (thankfully! I have enough addictions...).

As a result, I have to confess that I forgot about Twitter for most of the week, and possibly I haven't put enough in to Twitter to get much out of it. I'll try to be more active about it, and see if I can fulfil the criteria for Thing 16 before too long.

In more exciting and early modern news, I've got going on my project. I'm working towards a producing a catalogue of one of the college's most interesting manuscripts - a collection of letters, poems, speeches, masques etc from the early 17thC - so most of my time and enthusiasm are taken up with that.

Codcasting?

I've subscribed to a few podcasts, but haven't had chance to actually listen to any of them yet. From the BBC, I went for Front Row highlights, as a programme I always mean to listen to, but never do, and In Our Time. This is a favourite of mine, especially as this week's programme is on an Early Modern topic. This felt somewhat artificial, though, as I already subscribe to the email which lets me know when a new programme is released anyway. I couldn't immediately find anything of interest on podcast.com or Podcast Alley, but might have a closer look another time.

Still, the University lecture podcasts were good for a giggle. Before I actually went there, I thought 'I bet all the English lit ones are by Stuart Lee', and I was pretty much correct! In fact, I remember him telling us he was recording them for podcasts way back when I was doing my Old English Mods paper in 04-05, and although they've been re-recorded htis year, I'm sure they're basically the same so if I have the urge to revisit the Battle of Maldon or Dream of the Rood, I'll have the bizarre experience of listening to myself listening to a lecture...

One of the only two non-Old English items is a series by my own Masters supervisor on early modern drama - she was one of the best lecturers I heard, and they're on early modern drama, so I'll try to listen to them soon. Still, these are complete series, and aren't going to be updated, so it seems a bit pointless to actually subscribe to them - I know they're there now, and that's enough!

I can see that the Bod has done some Bodcasts, but I'm not sure that the Cod will be producing any in the near future!

Jumping the gun

As I like to press buttons to see what things do, in the process of establishing my start page, I ended up setting up Google Reader and subscribing to the 23 Things blog before I even noticed that it constituted a Thing. Putting off laundry may also have had something to do with the intensity of my curiosity.

Even though I'm writing this post just before the next Thing is assigned (writing Thing with a majuscule - note the bibliographer-in-training! - makes me think of aliens and blob monsters from sci-fi films like this one), I did subscribe to a few other RSS feeds at the start of the week.

I added the posts and comments of the Graduate Trainee blog, and the 23 Things (they're behind you...run!) of some of my fellow trainees. The one for CILIP was swiftly removed, as I was instantly bombarded with stuff that no amount of kowtowing to the idea of professional development was going to make me actually read.

I swapped it for the feed of the CILIP Rare Books and Special Collections group, of which I am a member, but apart from an advert for a conservation course taught by someone who will be conserving books in my library for a month in the summer, it's been very quiet.

The only not-quite-work-related one I found was the blog of the Centre for Early Modern Studies. I was hoping to get a feed of all the Early Modern events, but for some reason that resulted in being sent a single list of all the medieval seminars for the term. Still, as all the seminars start during working hours, I suppose it doesn't matter whether I hear about them in time or not! At least I can go to the History of the Book sessions, which are considered part of my training, and are amongst the closest to my own interests.

If I ever get round to evolving this blog beyond the 23 things programme (does it seem better in minuscule?), I'll expand on my love of the Early Modern, and hopefully make the blog live up to its title. And if I've intrigued you, you can go here for a very inadequate wikipedia definition of a commonplace book.