thing #15: what's in a wiki

For this exercise we were asked to take a look at some library wikis.

I looked at several through the links on the learn and play page. The differing ways in which they were constructed was interesting. I think the one I liked the best was the St. Joseph County Public Library System's website.

They had wikis in a variety of subjects, search tools, and a variety of options to communicate with and utilize the library staff.

Some of the other library wikis I visited featured book reviews organized by category. This would be a great tool for library staff to have and utilize when it came to recommending books to patrons. In fact, it might be useful to have a site like that for CML that was completely dedicated to book reviews. Staff could organize and add books, and patrons and others could add to the article listings It's a great way to keep everyone up to date on new publications and reader's reactions.

One of the wikis featured an organized "best practice" for libraries. I think this is an excellent tool- having lots of libraries from all over using one go to site to share best practice ideas and share experience with their application.

Other libraries have created home page wikis for themselves as a way to keep all informed on upcoming events and to keep users in touch with what other libraries are doing. I was impressed that one of these linked the public to WorldCat- which is one of my favorite virtual book tools, as well as Gnooks. Gnooks is a very cool site although I do not visit it over frequently.

The possible functions of the Wiki in a library setting is very varied and multifaceted. This is a great tool for reference and review. Massive amounts of information can be organized, labeled, searched, and added to with ease. That being said, some are better than others- and it is important to make sure a Wiki is not overloaded or hard to navigate.