Are you thinking about taking the plunge into the planet of internet two. with your library and creating a wiki? I lately place with each other a thriving wiki for my college library and so I would like to share some good results suggestions for how to do it effectively.

1. Which wiki platform are you going to use? This is important due to the fact there are hundreds of them out there and they all vary in terms of ease of use, value, and setup as nicely as the capability to manage who can view your wiki as nicely as who can post to your wiki.

2. Do you want to use your wiki exclusively as a process of organizing and changing material on your web site? Or do you want to use the wiki to allow your patrons to interact with each other?

3. What is the precise goal for your wiki? To communicate among library workers? To communicate with your patrons? To let your patrons communicate with each other?

4. What content are you going to include things like on your wiki? Just links to other pages on your library web web page, a searchable library catalog, data about library classes and events, common books, news and announcements or other products?

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

six. Is there a tech support individual obtainable to assist you install your wiki and to help 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 keeping a wiki? A wiki is a lot simpler to use and retain up with on a standard web-site, nonetheless, you cannot just place it up and under no circumstances commit time operating on it.

7. It also aids if you can create some wiki distinct content material. In our case we produced subject pages for each of the key subjects taught at our college and integrated hyperlinks to databases, magazines, books, ebooks, specialized encyclopedias and web sites for every single subject. Original hidden wiki have our library news and policies amongst other things of interest to our patrons on our wiki. You need 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 additional and far more libraries and other enterprises begin employing them, it is to your advantage to learn how to use 1 and to make a decision if it is suitable for your library.