Week 7, Thing 16; wiki's

As CCPL has used wiki's for several different projects in the past such as development of the Finksburg Branch, I thought I knew something about wiki's. Again, I was wrong. There are a wide variety of wiki's out there and more uses than I was aware of. I think that there are uses that can be very applicable to library communities, such as Gail's proposal and Dorothy's collaboration on a Peer Coaching wiki that developed out of the Peer Coaching pilot. This has been a real learning experience in ways to share professional information to a group and to replace a "binder" of information with expanded information through video, downloadable text, and comments from librarians. It can then be shared with a larger library community also. Some of the wiki's that I browsed were more informational or useful than others. The Princeton book review wiki was pretty straightforward in providing that service on a simple level--reviews were not in depth but gave a flavor of the reviewer's thoughts about the book. I found the Bull Run Library wiki interesting in that it was "run" by a patron and while it purported to be about programs at the library had expanded to postings about other libraries, including an article on Maryland doing 2.0, and even referrals to blogs and websites about a variety of topics.
The Library Services wiki was a great example of how the library community could contribute to professional information on a national level about a huge variety of services or information areas within professional needs and responsibilities. I will be referring to the teen programs section for further information to use in LATI about teen progrogramming. I think wiki's about major events, planning and soliciting public input, such as the Finksburg wiki as excellent ways library could use wiki's . Probably the most disconcerting aspect is being open to editing and adding to posts can be done by anyone, although most times libraries would be more restricted than say Wikipedia.