Great ideas for wikis in libraries

I think the some of the best examples of how libraries can use wikis (beyond any internal collaboration with co-workers) are Farkas’ suggestions that wikis be used for community information and catalogue annotations.

With a user population that is likely familiar with sites like Amazon.ca that support user comments, adding reviews, links, and book comments to a catalogue record would enrich the patron’s searching capabilities. It would be great to received “if you liked this one, try this one” recommendations from other patrons who love the same books as you do. A patron may even come to recognize one or two users with similar tastes and follow their recommendations closely. This could be a great place for librarians to provide reader’s advisory as well. Hmmm….

A wiki could very easily become a community hub, where activities and events are posted, as well as cancellations/adjustments, comments, warnings, offers to car-pool to events, etc. To facilitate the compiling of all of this information, completely up-to-date, in one location would be an excellent service for a library to offer. Spam would undoubtedly be a problem and would need to be moderated, but this is true of paper community bulletin boards to a certain degree as well.

I think the an important factor in the success of such a wiki would be in ensuring that it was somewhat aesthetically pleasing, as well as organized and navigatible for users. As Lamb points out that wikis' traditional ugliness and lack of explicit organization often turn users off.