Are you thinking about taking the plunge into the planet of web 2. with your library and developing a wiki? I recently put with each other a thriving wiki for my college library and so I would like to share some results ideas for how to do it effectively.

1. Which wiki platform are you going to use? This is critical since there are hundreds of them out there and they all vary in terms of ease of use, value, and setup as nicely as the potential to control who can view your wiki as effectively as who can post to your wiki.

two. Do you want to use your wiki exclusively as a method of organizing and altering material on your web-site? Or do you want to use the wiki to allow your patrons to interact with every other?

three. What is the precise goal for your wiki? To communicate between library staff? To communicate with your patrons? To let your patrons communicate with each other?

four. What content material are you going to include on your wiki? Just hyperlinks to other pages on your library internet web page, a searchable library catalog, facts about library classes and events, well-known books, news and announcements or other products?

five. Do you want to spend for a wiki service or do you want to use a cost-free wiki?

6. Is there a tech assistance individual available to assist you set up your wiki and to help with some periodic maintenance? 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 maintain up with on a standard site, on the other hand, you can’t just put it up and in no way devote time functioning on it.

7. It also assists if you can develop some wiki specific content. In our case we made subject pages for every single of the important subjects taught at our college and integrated hyperlinks to databases, magazines, books, ebooks, specialized encyclopedias and internet sites for each and every subject. We also have our library news and policies amongst other items of interest to our patrons on our wiki. You need to give your patrons a reason to study the wiki and to use it.

eight. Deep web links are one of the technologies of the future and as extra and additional libraries and other companies commence working with them, it is to your benefit to discover how to use one and to choose if it is correct for your library.