The Good Ship Beagle

Fun assignment– and Wetpaint was extremely easy to use. PBwiki is the site that I’d heard of before, but if I were starting one up it’s Wetpaint I’d try first. Sad truth: how things look is important to me. The toolbar with easy inserts made the process seem pretty easy.

I added a restaurant to the PBwiki site, and books to Wetpaint and Mediawiki.

Nope, not ready to start my own at this point…

I have been thinking about wikis for more than a year, particularly when I was playing with how to present a publication for Vermont libraries, the Good Ideas. Should it be a wiki, maybe with editing privileges for a few people or perhaps open to the world; or would it be better as a blog? I’m still leaning towards the blog– particularly now that I’ve become a little more comfortable with editing and presentation, thanks to 23 things.

When a library asked me for a ” new ideas in collection development,” the Princeton Library bookwiki was one of the ideas we discussed. Still looks like a great model to me, if we’re in a community where folks enjoy having a web presence. Meredith Farkas’s library successes wiki is an obvious way for connected librarians to build useful content– and I see that many subjects are fully populated. Nancy Pearl’s BookLust wiki seems like a natural link for book clubs.

Colbert’s story on wikis does point up the down side of using the world to post ideas. And certainly many academic institutions have sent the message out to students, don’t ever cite a wiki. On the other hand, I remember how amazed Grafton seniors were when they used Wikipedia to look up town information. It certainly says something about people who are interested in town history, when the entry is long and detailed.

Wikipedia has helped me with background information on anything technology– Digg It, Delicious, or acronyms, for example. I saw a new term in the Library Journal automation roundup– so obvious to the author that he hadn’t spelled it out. Thanks to Wikipedia, I get the context now.