Are you considering about taking the plunge into the planet of web two. with your library and generating a wiki? I not too long ago place collectively a effective wiki for my college library and so I would like to share some success ideas for how to do it successfully.
1. Which wiki Official hidden wiki are you going to use? This is critical simply because there are hundreds of them out there and they all differ in terms of ease of use, price tag, and setup as well as the capability to control who can view your wiki as well as who can post to your wiki.
two. Do you want to use your wiki exclusively as a approach of organizing and altering material on your internet site? Or do you want to use the wiki to enable your patrons to interact with every other?
3. What is the exact goal for your wiki? To communicate amongst library workers? To communicate with your patrons? To let your patrons communicate with each and every other?
4. What content material are you going to include things like on your wiki? Just links to other pages on your library net website, a searchable library catalog, information about library classes and events, preferred books, news and announcements or other items?
5. Do you want to spend for a wiki service or do you want to use a totally free wiki?
six. Is there a tech assistance particular person obtainable to assistance you set up your wiki and to assist with some periodic maintenance? If not, do you have a librarian who can take charge of the wiki and its updates and the technological side of maintaining a wiki? A wiki is a lot simpler to use and hold up with on a regular web page, nevertheless, you can not just place it up and never ever invest time functioning on it.
7. It also aids if you can develop some wiki precise content material. In our case we created topic pages for every single of the main subjects taught at our college and included links to databases, magazines, books, ebooks, specialized encyclopedias and web sites for each topic. We also have our library news and policies amongst other products of interest to our patrons on our wiki. You require to give your patrons a reason to study the wiki and to use it.
8. Wikis are a single of the technologies of the future and as a lot more and more libraries and other corporations start using them, it is to your advantage to learn how to use one particular and to decide if it is proper for your library.