Week 3 thoughts & need advice

I loved seeing all the ways libraries are using wikis this week. My library's most urgent need for social software (in my humble opinion) is better communication among staff. In particular, I'd like to find a better way for reference librarians to communicate with one another about reference resources, but also about what happened on previous shifts at the desk. (For example, the print management system is down, and we've already submitted a request for help. That sort of thing.)

A wiki seems best to build a knowledge base of reference resources. But I think we need a blog for sharing the little tidbits about what's been going on at the desk or in the library that others should know about.

I've been looking into the different wiki tools. I used Wiki Matrix to compare some of them--actually I used it twice. Once I just logged into it and did "compare." A lot of the comparison was too technical for this non-techie girl. In the webcast yesterday, though, I saw the Wiki Matrix Wizard and went back and used that. It asked me questions in plain language and helped me see the difference in the various wikis and help me think about what we need.

We need a hosted wiki, not installed. Since there will be some resistance to using this new-fangled stuff, it needs to be EASY. After doing the comparison and going to its site, I had almost settled on Wetpaint for an internal Reference wiki. It's hosted, free, has unlimited storage, and WYSiWYG for editing. How much better and easier could it get? I know there would be advertising and not much customization, but since this was just for our internal use, I thought that would be fine. Then I discovered that you cannot restrict or password-protect pages in Wetpaint. That would probably be okay if we're just sharing reference resources, but if we're also chatting with one another about what's going on in the library, not so good.

So that took me to PBWiki. The storage is more limited and sounds like there will be a little more of a learning curve for our folks using it, but you can password protect pages.

So now my question is--how to combine the Reference/wiki features and some sort of blog feature? Is there another Wiki tool (that's hosted) that would allow you to incorporate a blog? Just add a link to a blog? Or--as I noticed in the Bull Run Library Wiki--just add notes and news to the wiki itself? I'd love to hear advice before I take the plunge!

 Thanks!