Friday, December 21, 2007

Thing #19: Wikis!

This was one of the most informative "Things" I've done in this project--I really learned a lot, and also realized that I was greatly under-informed about what exactly wikis are, who uses them, and how.

I'd also like to give my appreciation to the Wikis in Plain English video from commoncraft.com. I love the style of these little vids, and it really helped me to visualize and understand the concepts behind both wikis and back in the social bookmarking exercise. Good choice!

I really like the idea of a wiki, particularly in a library environment. For the staff, it provides an easily-accessible way for staff to communicate and collaborate on projects, staying up to date, and can be done from any location in or out of the library. It could be a huge benefit for system-wide committees or project, reducing the number of face-to-face meetings.

In the public realm, I LOVE how a wiki could bring a sense of investment in the library to patrons--where they feel not only like they are being heard, but that they are actively and positively contributing to the success, function, and mission of the library. An annotated catalog--as mentioned in Using Wikis to Create Online Communities--makes SO much sense! What a great tool to develop collaboratively between patrons and staff, and perhaps more manageable and meaningful than Amazon. (And hey, while I love Amazon, and use it often enough at work, I think anything we can do to make our catalog the FIRST--and BEST--place for patrons to look for books, the better.)

And of course, the fact that wikis are easy to use, to edit, makes them a great access point for the technologically-challenged patron and library staff member alike. In a previous position, I spent two entire summers creating web pathfinders using an annoyingly complicated web design software that required checking-in and checking-out documents, and nevertheless we never seemed to know just WHICH document was the "real" document. And the software didn't work half the time, and we had to have licenses and all that--my word, making wikis of them would have been SO much easier!

Oh, and because I'm me, I have to add in here that my favorite wiki? Wookieepedia, naturally. :-) You don't know how often I have consulted this. But man, I learned the hard way to watch out for book spoilers! I so did not want to know about a major character death 4 books ahead of where I was. *frowns*

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