Tuesday, October 28, 2008

#16 So What’s in a Wiki?

Ahhhh Wikipedia where would we be without you?
I have always kind of liked this site and I enjoy coming across tools I already have an understanding of. Learning is wonderful but knowing just feels like coming home.
Getting a look at some library specific Wikis is interesting though, since I had not ever sought them out. After peeking at several of the Wiki I found a couple to be intriguing and useful and one just a bit old hat and good old fashioned common sense. I am choosing to write about the two I felt were most worth checking out.

Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki has some great links and some good spots but the nature of its advice is not all that different from the tings we have read in our e-mail to different sessions of staff days past. I really feel like the gold in this wiki, at least for me, was the links. It made my bookmark list at least so I feel like it's worth noting; for if you are trying to find an upcoming workshop or just refreshing your people skills it's a good place to start.

Now Library for Life had some good information that can be applied to things that we need to find, but I was taken by the charm of its local effort. It has quite a bit of information about the area it serves that just added local color. Although past learning a bit about South Bend, Indiana (The 5th largest city in Indiana with a population of just over 105,000) and its local government (The South Bend Common Council is made up of 11 committees) there were other useful tools such as the PC class handouts available for print. It is neat to see how they handle their classes.

Over all it was pretty nice to check out some resources and see how they compare and contrast with our own policies and practices. I was able to get some new book marks and see Wiki as more then just social fodder.

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