Saturday, August 25, 2007

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

Discovery Exercise:
1. For this discovery exercise, you are asked to take a look at some library wikis and then blog about your findings. Here’s a few examples to get you started:
SJCPL Subject Guides
Library 2.0 in 15 Minutes a Day
Book Lovers Wiki
Library Success
ALA 2006 New Orleans wiki
The Bull Run Library wiki
Other Academic Library Wiki Examples
MERLIN Wiki Learning link

2. Think about answering these questions as you post to your blog about your findings: What did you find interesting? What types of applications within libraries might work well with a wiki? So what's in a wiki? Find out by doing some exploring on your own.

I find the idea of wikkis themselves very interesting. It's also interesting to see how the profession is using them... for specific uses like ALA2006, etc. I also can see them being useful for workteams where the members are from various locales... like Baltimore County's "Best Books" committee. Even here in our own system they could potentially be used for various committees like Notable Books -- to open them up to more staff members to be able to nominate and comment on books... There could still be that opportunity for the "select few" to present titles.

Another potential use I could think of for wikis was booklists for children. Topics like humor, "scary books", etc.... it would be great to have the customers that use these titles recommending them to both us (librarians) and each other (other kids).
The kids would benefit because they could get recommendations from other kids, and also potentially be more interested in those books/reading because they themselves are taking ownership of the information. And we as librarians could benefit because we could see what the kids themeselves are interested in and are currently reading... especially useful if the topic isn't one we ourselves are interested in. (For example, I have a colleague who does not enjoy fantasy.)

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