Wikis and libraries

Wikis are great. What I found really interesting is how easily and quickly they can be updated and added to.

I though the manual of style was interesting on the Wookipeida site. I found the wikis on heritage/history sites a bit difficult to navigate around, but are a great idea - we have a local history collection in some of our branch libraries, and it would be great to have photo collections etc. available on a wiki site for members of the community to contribute their knowledge about events, people in photos, etc.

I think that wikis have great potential within libraries, particularly for staff manuals, and also for book reviews linked to items in the library online catalog.

I thought the Antioch University New England Library Staff Training & Support Wiki was fantastic. Some of the pages I looked at were Display policy, Journals on display, Emergency procedures, Journals shelving, Library server, and Open-Closing library.

Working for a public library with that has 11 service points using a wiki to facilitate quick and easy access to from all service points, and being able to immediately add information/update the site would be great. At the moment the "manual" is printed in a Word document, and kept in folders at each branch, and it takes time for updated pages to be freighted to each branch with weekly delivery boxes, etc. Its great to be able to have lots of pages, and links to other pages/sites, etc.

I thought the Book Lovers Wiki at Princeton Public Library is a great way to get book reviews from individuals and to make these available to other library users to read and add their thoughts to.

I bookmarked lots of the wiki sites I visited so that I can go back and have another look at them when I have more time - time to do some work.