wiki-ness

Yesterday afternoon I went through the wiki section of the Learning 2.0 tutorial. I learned a bit about the whole wiki thing, and saw a couple of uses it could have in our library.

The only wiki-type thing I have ever really been exposed to is WIkipedia. I understand how it all works and have had a bit of fun looking at some of the flame wars that happen with regard to contentious facts and the various interpretations that the contributors may have. What I hadn't ever really thought about was how wikis could be used on a much smaller scale.

In the back room here we have a whiteboard on which staff members can make suggestions as to discussion points for the next staff meeting. We thought, "hey, we could make a wiki that staff can access to do this, instead of the white board!" My colleague also pointed out that this would mean we could have a permanent record of suggestions that we could keep and look back on.

Another useful application for wikis could be to replace the daily diary we keep at the front desk. This diary is used to pass on important information to staff, and is particularly important in alerting weekend staff (who the weekday staff sometimes never see in person) to issues that may have cropped up during the week and need ongoing attention over the weekend. Use of a wiki in this circumstance could create on ongoing dialogue between the staff who work different shifts and hopefully result in better communication between all staff.

As an added bonus, we also modified the Wikipedia article on West Ryde! Where it previously mentioned "Ryde library", we changed it to "West Ryde Public Library"!! I really feel like I'm making a difference on the information superhighway.