Are you thinking about taking the plunge into the planet of web two. with your library and creating a wiki? I not too long ago place collectively a effective wiki for my college library and so I would like to share some achievement tips for how to do it effectively.
1. Which wiki platform are you going to use? This is critical due to the fact there are hundreds of them out there and they all vary in terms of ease of use, price, and setup as properly as the capacity to manage who can view your wiki as properly as who can post to your wiki.
2. Do you want to use your wiki exclusively as a method of organizing and changing material on your web page? Or do you want to use the wiki to permit your patrons to interact with each other?
3. What is the exact goal for your wiki? To communicate among library staff? To communicate with your patrons? To let your patrons communicate with every single other?
four. What content are you going to contain on your wiki? Just hyperlinks to other pages on your library net web site, a searchable library catalog, details about library classes and events, well-known books, news and announcements or other things?
5. Do you want to pay for a wiki service or do you want to use a absolutely free wiki?
6. Is there a tech support particular person out there to help you set up your wiki and to assist with some periodic upkeep? If not, do you have a librarian who can take charge of the wiki and its updates and the technological side of sustaining a wiki? A wiki is a lot easier to use and maintain up with on a typical site, having said that, you can not just place it up and never spend time operating on it.
7. The official hidden wiki assists if you can develop some wiki specific content. In our case we designed subject pages for every of the significant subjects taught at our college and included hyperlinks to databases, magazines, books, ebooks, specialized encyclopedias and web sites for each and every topic. We also have our library news and policies amongst other things of interest to our patrons on our wiki. You want to give your patrons a cause to study the wiki and to use it.
eight. Wikis are one particular of the technologies of the future and as additional and far more libraries and other organizations begin utilizing them, it is to your advantage to study how to use one particular and to decide if it is right for your library.