Exploration 7: Wonderful World of Wikis

Will Require: Reading, watching a video (needs sound) and browsing websites @30 minutes

From Maryland Libraries Learning:

A wiki is a collaborative website and authoring tool that allows users to easily add, remove and edit content. Wikipedia, the online open-community encyclopedia, is the largest and perhaps the most well known of these knowledge sharing tools. With the benefits that wikis provide, the use and popularity of these tools is exploding.

Some of the benefits that make wikis so attractive are:

• Anyone (registered or unregistered, if unrestricted) can add, edit or delete content.


• Tracking tools within wikis allow you to easily keep up on what has been changed and by whom.


• Earlier versions of a page can be viewed and reinstated when needed.


• Users do not need to know HTML in order to apply styles to text or to add and edit content. In most cases simple syntax structure is used.

For more information, watch Wikis in Plain English at http://www.commoncraft.com/video-wikis-plain-english. (turn on your computer’s sound first!)

As you can see, wikis can be used for many different purposes. Like much of 2.0, to keep a wiki relevant, it should be constantly updated and revised. The good news is, the responsibility does not lie on one webmaster’s shoulders, but is shared by all members of the wiki. And, as mentioned above, HTML knowledge is not required to edit a wiki page.

AACPL has been experimenting with wikis for a few years. The New Technology Committee has created the Technology in AACPL Wiki on pbworks. Click here to access : http://technologyinaacpl.pbworks.com/. Committee members are using the wiki to keep track of different ways the system and the branches use our current technology and also stay up to date on other tech trends. Feel free to click around and explore what is available so far. To log on to this AACPL wiki and all other AACPL system wikis login/user name = aacpl15@gmail.com and password = sneaks. Check out all the other system wikis at our staff intranet site, http://intranet.aacpl.net/.

WebJunction has some suggestions for how libraries and librarians can use wikis.

Last year, ALA created a wiki to help organize and coordinate the national conference in Washington D.C. – take a look at the finished product. Do you think this sort of resource was helpful to the visitors? Will this be a useful tool now that the conference is over?

The Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki attempts to collect information on every aspect of working in a library – from management to programming. Click around and see what sort of information you can find. Is this a useful tool for librarians?

Now log into your blog and post your thoughts and reactions to Wikis and the library.