Are you thinking about taking the plunge into the planet of internet two. with your library and developing a wiki? I recently put collectively a successful wiki for my college library and so I would like to share some achievement ideas for how to do it successfully.
1. Which wiki platform are you going to use? This is crucial because there are hundreds of them out there and they all differ in terms of ease of use, value, and setup as well as the capability to manage 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 strategy of organizing and altering material on your internet site? Or do you want to use the wiki to enable your patrons to interact with every single other?
three. What is the exact goal for your wiki? To communicate in between library staff? To communicate with your patrons? To let your patrons communicate with each and every other?
four. What Onion links are you going to involve on your wiki? Just links to other pages on your library web internet site, a searchable library catalog, information about library classes and events, common books, news and announcements or other things?
5. Do you want to spend for a wiki service or do you want to use a totally free wiki?
six. Is there a tech help individual available to enable 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 retain up with on a standard internet site, having said that, you can not just put it up and never spend time working on it.
7. It also assists if you can develop some wiki distinct content material. In our case we designed subject pages for every single of the major subjects taught at our college and integrated links to databases, magazines, books, ebooks, specialized encyclopedias and internet sites for each and every topic. 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 cause to study the wiki and to use it.
8. Wikis are a single of the technologies of the future and as more and more libraries and other businesses commence working with them, it is to your advantage to study how to use one particular and to choose if it is correct for your library.