Whenever I see the word wiki I think of the Wizard of Oz and the Winkies. Who knows, right? Anyway, this week’s assignment was to explore wikis and all their wonderful wikidness.
We’ve been talking about them for years, even played around with our own last year with a subscription from a certain vendor that I believe started with a jot and ended with a spot – but don’t quote me on that. The problem was it was a bit clunky for us and no one wanted to add anything. You have to have a good foundation product before you can get buy-in from the staff and public, yes?
I checked out a couple of examples that were provided at 23 Things. Most of the library wikis tend to catalog and sort books (just a rehash of what they do already – boring), but Book Lovers Wiki was nice and different and actually had some book reviews with star ratings. Big thumbs up on that. I also liked the theory behind Library Success: A best practices wiki, but again, you run into the problem of folks not populating. So while it looks pretty and there is some real implications for knowledge sharing there, this is a case where if you build it - it doesn’t neccesarily mean they’ll come.
If, and I do mean IF our library were to try its hand at wikis again, I see them as more of an internal use. A place to post instructional and proceedural manuals – you know, as a centralized place to update and access. If we were to open it to the public (as in Center public), then we might convert the KAs to wiki format (which won’t happen) to allow everyone the ability to update.
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