#16 Learn about wikis and discover some innovative ways that libraries are using them

A wiki is a collaborative website and authoring tool that allows users to easily add, remove and edit content. Wikipedia, the online open-community encyclopedia, is the largest and perhaps the most well known of these knowledge sharing tools. With the benefits that wikis provide, the use and popularity of these tools is exploding.

Some of the benefits that make wikis so attractive are:

• Anyone (registered or unregistered, if unrestricted) can add, edit or delete content.
• Tracking tools within wikis allow you to easily keep up on what has been changed and by whom.
• Earlier versions of a page can be viewed and reinstated when needed.
• And users do not need to know HTML in order to apply styles to text or to add and edit content. In most cases simple syntax structure is used.

As the use of wikis has grown over the last few years, libraries all over the country have begun to use them to collaborate and share knowledge. Among their applications are pathfinder or subject guide wikis, book review wikis, ALA conference wikis and even library best practices wikis.

Discovery Resources:

Use these resources to learn more aboout wikis:

Wiki’s: A Beginner’s Look – an excellent short slide presentation that offers a short introduction with examples.
What is a Wiki? – a Library Success wiki presentation
Using Wikis to Create Online Communities – a good overview of what a wiki is and how it can be used in libraries.
Wiki, wiki, wiki - excerpted from the Public Library of Charlotte and Meckenburg County's (PLCMC) Core Compentency blog

Discovery Exercise:

1. For this discovery exercise, you are asked to take a look at some library wikis and then blog about your findings. Here’s a few examples to get you started:
   SJCPL Subject Guides – a pathfinder wiki developed by the St. Joseph County Public Library system
   Library 2.0 in 15 Minutes a Day - a page of the Oregon Librarian Instruction wiki by Sam Wallin (similar to our 23 things)
   Book Lovers Wiki - developed by the Princeton Public Library
   Library Success: A best practices wiki - Parent wiki to the "What is a Wiki" article above
   ALA 2006 New Orleans wiki – an example of a wiki created to support a specific event
   The Bull Run Library wiki - a public library wiki (notice, not all wiki's need to be identified as wiki's)
   Other Academic Library Wiki Examples
   MERLIN Wiki Learning link (MERLIN: Maryland's Essential Resource for Library Information Networks)
   
2. Think about answering these questions as you post to your blog about your findings: What did you find interesting? What types of applications within libraries might work well with a wiki? So what's in a wiki? Find out by doing some exploring on your own.