Saturday, October 18, 2008

Library Wikis

As libraries move forward into the land of web 2.0, they have discovered wikis. The example sites i looked at didn't seem very helpful to a customer standpoint, but probably makes it easier for staff to add info. One of the wikis was for patrons to create book reviews for a summer reading club, but then it was archived instead of being left open. Another example was the best practices which patrons would have no reason to change. A community events page was nice, but I didn't see a way to edit from my side.

A virtual community bulletin board would be nice to have, since most of the branches have limited physical posting space. I also like the idea of an Amazon-like catalogue where patrons can add reviews, ratings, tags, and links to similar books. Wikis have a lot of promise for libraries, but they need to have a reason to be used properly.

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