All about Wikis

Hosting a wiki that's open to the public can be a difficult decision for a library to make because of the fear of people posting inappropriate content. At least with blogs you can have "moderated" comments so the librarian can make sure they are not offensive before allowing them to be published. I noticed when going through the case studies this week that some libraries chose to allow people to contribute to them (after signing up for an account) and others chose to be closed to the public. Although the fear of sabotage might be overblown, when inappropriate content is posted on a website with the library's brand not everyone will recognize that it wasn't actually the library staff posting but a member of the public.

Even though adding content to a wiki is quick and easy, and you can keep formatting to a minimum, I think it's still important to keep web design and architecture in mind. People don't read computer screens the same way they read printed pages so paragraphs should be kept short and sweet. On the homepage it's probably still a good idea to have contact information and a link to frequently asked questions. If you want to keep people coming back to the wiki, there should be some kind of featured content that's refreshed on a regular basis.

When I was looking at the case studies for this week, I was impressed especially with the Biz Wiki. It was easy to navigate and had a lot of good content. What's interesting about it is that it looks like it's maintained by only one librarian. Even though wikis were designed to be collaborative tools, I can see why they would be an attractive option to someone who wanted the ability to quickly edit and add content to the web. You don't need as many web skills to maintain a wiki opposed to a traditional website, and there's no go-between- you can edit the pages directly from anywhere with an internet connection.

On the other hand, I wasn't very impressed with the Butler WikiRef. There was hardly any very good content (I clicked around for a bit and only found a couple of lines of text for a few of the resources) and when there was it didn't seem to be very helpful. In theory it is a good idea, but without the backing of a community who is keen to add their ideas and opinions there isn't much value. Maybe they should do what the Book Lovers Wiki is doing and offer the chance to win a prize for contributing!