Are you pondering about taking the plunge into the world of web 2. with your library and developing a wiki? I recently place together a productive wiki for my college library and so I would like to share some success strategies for how to do it successfully.
1. Which wiki platform are you going to use? This is crucial mainly because there are hundreds of them out there and they all differ in terms of ease of use, cost, and setup as well as the potential to control who can view your wiki as nicely as who can post to your wiki.
2. Do you want to use your wiki exclusively as a approach of organizing and altering material on your website? Or do you want to use the wiki to enable your patrons to interact with every single other?
3. What is the exact objective for your wiki? To communicate in between library personnel? To communicate with your patrons? To let your patrons communicate with each and every other?
four. What content are you going to incorporate on your wiki? Just links to other pages on your library internet website, a searchable library catalog, details about library classes and events, preferred books, news and announcements or other items?
five. Do thehiddenwiki.org want to spend for a wiki service or do you want to use a no cost wiki?
six. Is there a tech help particular person out there to help you install your wiki and to help 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 maintaining a wiki? A wiki is a lot simpler to use and hold up with on a common site, on the other hand, you can’t just place it up and in no way devote time working on it.
7. It also helps if you can create some wiki particular content. In our case we created topic pages for each and every of the main subjects taught at our college and included hyperlinks to databases, magazines, books, ebooks, specialized encyclopedias and websites for each and every subject. We also have our library news and policies amongst other products of interest to our patrons on our wiki. You have to have to give your patrons a cause to study the wiki and to use it.
8. Wikis are 1 of the technologies of the future and as a lot more and more libraries and other businesses commence working with them, it is to your advantage to understand how to use one particular and to decide if it is proper for your library.
