How to Produce and Use a Wiki in Your Library

Are you pondering about taking the plunge into the planet of net two. with your library and making a wiki? I lately put collectively a profitable wiki for my college library and so I would like to share some results strategies for how to do it successfully.

1. Which wiki platform are you going to use? This is vital since there are hundreds of them out there and they all differ in terms of ease of use, price tag, and setup as well as the capacity to control who can view your wiki as properly as who can post to your wiki.

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

3. What is the precise goal for your wiki? To communicate in between library staff? To communicate with your patrons? To let your patrons communicate with every other?

4. What content are you going to contain on your wiki? Just hyperlinks to other pages on your library internet website, a searchable library catalog, information and facts about library classes and events, popular books, news and announcements or other products?

5. Do you want to spend for a wiki service or do you want to use a absolutely free wiki?

6. Is there a tech support particular person accessible to support you install your wiki and to assist 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 preserving a wiki? A wiki is a lot easier to use and maintain up with on a frequent internet site, nevertheless, you can not just place it up and under no circumstances spend time operating on it.

7. It also assists if you can develop some wiki particular content. In Hidden wiki url produced topic pages for each of the important subjects taught at our college and incorporated links to databases, magazines, books, ebooks, specialized encyclopedias and websites for every topic. We also have our library news and policies amongst other products of interest to our patrons on our wiki. You want to give your patrons a reason to study the wiki and to use it.

8. Wikis are one of the technologies of the future and as a lot more and extra libraries and other firms begin employing them, it is to your advantage to discover how to use one particular and to determine if it is appropriate for your library.