Are you considering about taking the plunge into the world of internet 2. with your library and generating a wiki? I lately place collectively a successful wiki for my college library and so I would like to share some success ideas for how to do it successfully.

1. Which wiki platform are you going to use? This is vital simply because there are hundreds of them out there and they all differ in terms of ease of use, price, and setup as properly as the potential to control who can view your wiki as well 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 site? Or do you want to use the wiki to permit your patrons to interact with every single other?

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

4. What content are you going to incorporate on your wiki? Just hidden wiki to other pages on your library web web-site, a searchable library catalog, data about library classes and events, popular books, news and announcements or other items?

5. Do you want to spend for a wiki service or do you want to use a no cost wiki?

six. Is there a tech support individual accessible to enable you set up your wiki and to assist with some periodic upkeep? 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 hold up with on a common web-site, even so, you can not just place it up and by no means spend time operating on it.

7. It also aids if you can develop some wiki particular content. In our case we produced subject pages for each and every of the key subjects taught at our college and incorporated links to databases, magazines, books, ebooks, specialized encyclopedias and web-sites for every single topic. We also have our library news and policies amongst other products of interest to our patrons on our wiki. You will need to give your patrons a reason to study the wiki and to use it.

8. Wikis are 1 of the technologies of the future and as extra and extra libraries and other businesses start using them, it is to your advantage to find out how to use one and to make a decision if it is ideal for your library.