Monday, September 24, 2007

#16 Learn about wikis and discover some innovative ways that libraries are using them

What did you find interesting? What types of applications within libraries might work well with a wiki? So what's in a wiki?
I liked seeing the different library wikis. The success one had great links for librarians such as conferences, Library Success: A best practices wiki. MERLIN has a list of ways libraries have used wikis. Wet Paint sounded interesting.

Wet Paint http://www.wetpaint.com/ is a free hosted website service that lets anyone start their own click-and-type website in three easy steps. Wetpaint combines the best elements of wikis, blogs, and bulletin boards into a single application. Harford County is building this site to collaborate about their technology plan. Please note that you cannot upload files, but you can link to where they are located. Also, the site you build must be public.

Bull Run Library Wiki

From it I learned about the pilot program offered through OCLC.It provides WorldCat users the opportunity to recoup a portion of their fees through book purchases. The program was described to this wiki in an email from Chuck Costakos of OCLC. http://bullrunlibrary.pbwiki.com/OCLC%20Information

I am sure there are many ways wikis could be used by libraries. Using one for training purposes is one of my first thoughts. Another is to put school reading lists on a local branch wiki in order for students and parents to access them easily. I would really like to see better access to school reading lists at the local library. I have worked at a branch where this worked well in the old days of paper.

I suppose almost anything can be contained in a wiki. It all depends on its purpose.

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