Week 7 - Thing #16 - Wikis

Wikis could have lots of uses for us in the library and the larger library community of users. For one, I think people, and I don't mean just library staff, creating their own subject categories for materials makes a lot of sense. I can also see group collaboration in many areas for library staff - planning for meetings and training workshops, organizing committee projects, preparing for conferences, the list goes on.

I particularly liked the Book Lovers Wiki fromPrincton Public Library, and thought it was a terrific idea. We already have Readers Place, which provides lots of opportunities for readers to submit their reviews of books, but our Readers Place coordinator has a certain amount of (necessary) editorial control over what is posted. I see the need for some control on a site such as that. But suppose beyond Readers Place, we also provided for an Amazon-like opportunity for people to write brief reviews, kind of snippets about books that they particularly liked. OK, so the reviews might not be masterpieces of writing, but neither are Amazon's user reviews. Readers can give honest impressions of books and maybe drum up some conversations about our materials.

I wonder if HCPL could use a wiki to provide users with an opportunity to add community information. Is that animal rescue organization holding a fundraiser in Forest Hill? Hey, HCPL has the community wiki resource available to post information about where and when. Is the town of Bel Air holding a community concert next Wednesday night? Great, post that information on our community wiki information board and get the word out. Maybe other entities could provide wikis as well - Harford County government, the towns of Havre de Grace, Aberdeen, and Bel Air, and other community groups - and we could all link from one to another. One world indeed! Linked from one to another...

Didn't we have a community resource guide once? (Maybe we still do, but I don't think I've used it for years - don't even know where it is.) Well, what if we have a wiki that allows community groups - non-profits, government agencies, and so on - to post information about the organizations - name, contact persons, addresses, telephone numbers, links to Web sites, purpose statement, and so on. Let the community keep the information up to date. And yes, occasionally, we or someone will need to clean up the wiki, to clear out entries for groups that no longer exist, but each group would be responsible for keeping information accurate and up to date. Just some ideas on using wikis...