Office 2.0: Google Docs

I began using googledocs about two months ago through the work I have been doing with CODEP. Several members post documents to allow easy viewing and editing which is particularly useful as we all live in different parts of the country and are often working on things at different times. It is also really useful if you forget your memory stick and need to save your work when working on a shared computer. I think it has a very friendly interface and as it is similar to Word it is nice and easy to use.

Wikipedia

The very fact that there is a WISER session entitled 'Beyond Wikipedia: Reliable Reference Sources' run by librarians, for staff and students at Oxford highlights the prominence of Wikipedia, in academic research. I use it all the time, to ‘check’ pieces of information and to research and I have friends who contribute or translate pages regularly. The editing feature once again makes the sharing views and information really easy and readily accessible and yet it also challenges my understanding of what an author is, who owns a piece of writing and who is responsible for regulating it. No doubt I will go on using Wikipedia for both serious study and fun research, knowing that it has its limitations but also that it is a great source of information.