Well, thanks to you Brett for bringing up the indexing issue in the first place. Ever since, I’ve been thinking a lot about this and have even more ideas. I’m so excited I may even write a blog post about it. Too bad your project didn’t get off the ground but timing is, as they say, everything. And I think now may be the time.

Steve, that’s an interesting idea, using a wiki. To tell the truth, that never entered my mind, but all possibilities should be examined!

Imagine a cooperative effort to index and abstract LIS literature. Maintain it in a wiki, with each article having its own page. A template would guide reviewers in entering structured information about the article. Non-reviewers could comment on and ask questions about the article and vote on whether they would recommend it. The wiki could have author pages, with each page having links to all of the author’s abstracted articles, and registered user pages, with each page having links to all of the user’s contributions to the wiki.

If the idea works–if a critical mass of library practitioners read and contribute to the wiki–then it could eventually evolve into something more: A place for authors to publish their work, bypassing the journal process altogether. A place for a community of readers and writers of LIS research to form, connect, and grow. And a training and testing ground for the larger project of re-taking indexing and abstracting.