#12 Discover wikis

• Watch this video: Wikis in Plain English [3:52]

A wiki is a collaborative website and authoring tool that allows users to easily add, remove and edit content. Wikipedia, the online open-community encyclopedia, is the largest and perhaps the most well known of these knowledge sharing tools. With the benefits that wikis provide the use and popularity of these tools is exploding.

Some of the benefits that make wikis so attractive are:

• Anyone (registered or unregistered, if unrestricted) can add, edit or delete content.
• Tracking tools within wikis allow you to easily keep up on what been changed and by whom.
• Earlier versions of a page can be viewed and reinstated when needed.
• And users do not need to know HTML in order to apply styles to text or add and edit content. In most cases simple syntax structure is used.

As the use of wikis has grown over the last few years, libraries all over the country have begun to use them to collaborate and share knowledge. Among their applications are pathfinder or subject guide wikis, book review wikis, ALA conference wikis and even library best practices wikis.


Things to Do:

1. Take a look at some of these resources to learn more about wikis:

• Wiki, wiki, wiki - from Charlotte's Core Competency blog
  
• Wiki’s: A Beginner’s Look – an excellent short slide presentation that offers a short introduction and examples.
  
• What is a Wiki? – Library Success wiki presentation
  
• Using Wikis to Create Online Communities – a good overview of what a wiki is and how it can be used in libraries.
  
  

2. Check out some of these wikis:

• Wikipedia - the most famous wiki so far!
  


• SJCPL Subject Guides - a pathfinder wiki developed by the St. Joseph County Public Library system
  


• Nancy Pearl's Book Lust Wiki - a wiki based on the Book Lust books
  
  
• Library Success: A best practices wiki - a one-stop shop for great ideas and information for all types of librarians
  


• ALA 2006 New Orleans wiki - a wiki created for a specific event
  


• Durham County Library's Strategic Plan
  - created to involve the community in the library's strategic planning efforts.
  


• Library Instruction Wiki - a resource for librarians involved with or interested in instruction
  
  
• WikiIndex - a wiki guide to wikis
  
  

3. Contribute to a wiki! "Sandbox" is the term that wikis often use to describe the area of the website that should be used for pure play. For this discovery and exploration exercise, we’ve set up a whole Learning 2.0 Favorites wiki that’s for nothing but play! This wiki was created using pbwiki.com, a wiki hosting site that is free for educational wikis.

For this “explore-and-play-with-wikis” exercise, you are asked to add an entry or two to the Learning 2.0 wiki sandbox. The theme of this wiki is simply “Favorites” : Favorite books, favorite vacation spots, favorite restaurants, favorite anything …all you need to do is play and add your thoughts.

To access the wiki sandbox, go to http://wcpl20.pbwiki.com. To log in, enter 4020carya for the invite key followed by your name and email address.

Editing is pretty simple. Click on the link for the page you want to edit (Favorite Blogs, for example). When you're on that page, click the Edit page button to begin. If you run into any questions or comments, just post a comment on this blog entry.

4. Want to start your own wiki? Try pbwiki.com, wetpaint.com, or check out this guide to wiki hosting sites.

5. Post a comment here to tell us about your experience exploring wikis. How do you think wikis might be useful in libraries?