#16 So what’s in a wiki?

I have often used Wikipedia to gather info quickly (for example, what books or papers someone has had published) but I have never thought of it as an authoritative source. I think a library wiki is a great idea! It's not much different to the reader advisory resources already on offer on most library websites, but it would allow members to contribute too. As one of the article mentioned it can be difficult for librarians to find the time to update the library's reader advisory web pages, but allowing clients to post their comments about books and recommend others (much like Amazon) is fantastic. You could get a real community going. Plus it would be very satisfying for borrowers to see their words posted on the website. I'm not sure about internal library wikis though - we have an Intranet here at work and it seems to be sufficient. I don't think I could keep up with another forum! I see that Wikipedia now requires an email address because of vandalism - this would be a good practice to adopt when setting up a wiki. If I was to set up a wiki for our library, my first port of call would be the 'Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki' (http://libsuccess.org/index.php?title=Main_Page).