Wikis

Like most social media tools, Wikis are kind of restructuring how we think about knowledge. Wikis allow anyone to contribute, which, obviously, has its pros and cons. But still, they allow for multiple, varied perspectives to populate discussions. I see this as a really great advantage when building a community local history website. A sense of place and neighborhood can be greatly enhanced by collections of personal memories and anecdotes of local lived experience (think StoryCorps, but on a local level).

One of the problems, as I'm sure most of us saw from all the dead links in the Wikis presentation, is keeping people interested in your Wiki. It's a problem any website developer has to deal with. How do you keep people coming back? To some degree, you have to make them rely on your website. I see this as the biggest challenge for Wiki development.

I think one of the best ways for a library to use a Wiki is for intrastaff use. It can help everyone get on the same page so that user needs can be met efficiently. I worked at a radio station that used a Wiki to host instructions for every single aspect of the radio station, from changing the speed of the turntable, to turning off the furnace, to instructions and requirements concerning blog posts. Literally everything you would need to know about anything at the station. When it was first developed, people would come into the engineers/IT office to ask us how to do something, and we were instructed to tell them "It's on the Wiki." This was annoying for us, and initially frustrating for the non-technical staff members. Within a few weeks, however, everyone came to realize that anything they needed to know was explained on the Wiki. It made the place work more efficiently. It freed up the technical staff to do things like web site development instead of just tech support all day long. In a library setting, a Wiki that hosts resources for information retrieval, finding aids, etc., can make the retrieval process faster and easier, and free up library staff to do things that might be more useful, like community outreach or development programs.