Thing #16 Wiki Wiki
Last year, after I attended a Wiki class with Michael Saurs from the NLC, I created a Wiki using PBWiki to use with the Education Committee of the Douglas County Historical Society. I have found it very useful to keep track of our committee work. I originally was hoping that everyone would buy into it and we could do some collaborative grant proposal writing. That didn't happen. It was mostly due to a technical skills gap of the committee members - or, at least a perceived technical skills gap. I have continued to use it to post meeting agendas, meeting notes, sub-committee project information, etc. I will state that it hasn't always been as easy as making a Peanut Butter sandwich, but it has been a learning experience!
I looked at the linked sites - the St. Joseph County Public Library reading genre links were good and I noticed that they were also updated in October - and had book jacket covers which made them more interesting than a pure textual site. I think this is a good application for a library wiki - as we all read good books, we could all be submitting short reviews. "WikiNorthia" is cool - collaborative effort to make local history accessible, and I think that could be put to good use with other institutions.
"Event Specific" wikis such as the "Book Lover's Wiki Summer Reading 2006" may provide a snapshot in time about the event, but it is tragic that that much effort goes into a site to have it abandoned after the event. I recently had the opportunity to eat with 3 people from the ALA Public Programming Office and they were talking about how the Wiki format for conferences were rather labor intensive - and then dropped like a hot potato after the event and seemed to them to not be worth all the time and effort.
I looked at the linked sites - the St. Joseph County Public Library reading genre links were good and I noticed that they were also updated in October - and had book jacket covers which made them more interesting than a pure textual site. I think this is a good application for a library wiki - as we all read good books, we could all be submitting short reviews. "WikiNorthia" is cool - collaborative effort to make local history accessible, and I think that could be put to good use with other institutions.
"Event Specific" wikis such as the "Book Lover's Wiki Summer Reading 2006" may provide a snapshot in time about the event, but it is tragic that that much effort goes into a site to have it abandoned after the event. I recently had the opportunity to eat with 3 people from the ALA Public Programming Office and they were talking about how the Wiki format for conferences were rather labor intensive - and then dropped like a hot potato after the event and seemed to them to not be worth all the time and effort.
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