Playing in the sandbox

I've done some playing in the NVDPL SandBox wiki by adding a favourite book - Enchanted April - countries I've travelled to and place for good eats. It was easy! As for Enchanted April, I'd recommend the movie too. One of my favourites!

Wild and wacky wikis...

I've explored the suggested library wikis and found others to look at, including VPL's Chinese-Canadians Profiles From a Community. That shows how a wiki can be used to serve/target a very specific user group, yet still interest the rest of the community as well.

I think wikis would be great for promoting programs, especially ones that come up that have little time for lots of publicity. Also, they would make committee communication much easier - no more forwarding and replying to emails to the group. Wikis would not only be good for the standard patron reader's choice suggestions, but also for viewer's and listener's choices.

The only problem with free public access is having an editor who would have the time to moderate the postings. I noticed on the Library Success wiki, the first comment is about vandalism problems. Otherwise, I think the idea of public libraries using wikis as another way to communicate is a good one.

As for the bear. An homage to our neighbourhood black bear, who spent Tuesday afternoon sleeping in the neighbour's cherry tree!

Wandering through wikis

I've started looking at wikis (#14) and will have to finish it off next week. I see many great uses so far, especially for reader's advisory where the public can contribute lit picks and reviews. More next week