Wiki Mania

Wikis were all the rage this week! I never knew that a wiki could be used in so many different ways. After exploring various library wikis, conducting wiki tool comparisons, and taking part in the outstanding course content for this week,I have come up a few ideas of ways to use wikis in my library.

Idea 1: A “Fiftieth Anniversary Wiki” – Our library is planning a fiftieth anniversary celebration. Calling back to the days the Library was founded – all activities have one goal: To reinforce the “Growing for Generations” campaign. So, I thought wouldn’t a wiki be a perfect implementation for this project. We could begin with an internal wiki, which we would use to collaborate adding information for each time period (1957, 1967, 1977, etc.), include a project calendar (possibly 30 boxes), and discuss project details (ex.: Jerry Mathers is kicking off the event – “Leave It to Beaver”). Then I think it would be great to allow the community to contribute to the library wiki. This would provide such rich content possibly from each era. Also this would be a great way to promote the event! I think by using a wiki the community will feel like they are truly apart of the “Growing for Generations” campaign.

Idea 2: GPL Social Software Wiki – Another idea for a wiki at my library would be creating a Social Software Wiki. This internal wiki would provide an understanding and a personal record of the online course that I’m taking. So many of my colleagues keeping asking me – “What is Five Weeks to a Social Library?” So I thought why not show them using a wiki. We can use this wiki for training and adding any other Library 2.0 information we discover.

Idea 3: Bead-It Wiki – This wiki idea stems from our library patrons having such an extreme interest in us offering beaded jewelry classes. We had a class last week that could have consisted of over 50 patrons! The patrons that were able to participate diligently took notes and asked questions. So I thought I would play around with creating a wiki for the library that offers some beaded information. I would love to make it localized with community information. Right now it was just to practice. I used Wetpaint to create the Bead-It Wiki.

Wiki Tools:
At this point, I think I would have to use a hosted wiki for now. However, I hope my ideas will help my library realize what great things a wiki can do for us! Then possibly we could invest either in purchasing in additional features for the hosted wikis or eventually use something like MediaWiki or PmWiki – it would be great to have the information stored on our own server.

This week I had so much fun exploring different wiki tool options. I started with Wetpaint for the funky Bead-It Wiki. So far it worked great, easy to use, add widgets, lock pages etc. The negative so far was that I wasn’t able to add a Library Thing widget (doesn’t support Script tags). For the GPL Social Library Wiki idea, I started playing with PBwiki. I think this looks clean, professional, and will be easy for colleagues to contribute to. For the Fiftieth Anniversary Wiki, I would love to use MediaWiki or PmWiki – This would work well if we want to store this information and it would be easy for the community to use.

Week 3 made me: Wiki #1 Fan!