Writing reviews on books lends itself well to the idea of a wiki whereby the community can contribute frequently, authoritatively and enthusiastically on chosen literature. This works well with the Princeton Public Library Book Lovers wiki. The adult members of the summer reading program could either create a review on the wiki directly after obtaining a log in agreeing to certain rules and disclaimers or they could e-mail the review to the library who would input it to the wiki. The result is list of 17 genres with over 225 titles, with a star rating which represent the summer's reading reviews for the community who participated. This wiki represents a limited period of time and seems to have been set up primarily for the summer reading club. There has been little activity on this wiki for almost a year. It seems to be a dormant wiki but it appears that it will be revitalised in the summer of 2007 whereby it will serve the same purpose as the summer of 2006. There is no indication at this time whether the list will be added to with the 2007 additions or a seperate list will be created. I especially like the links to the authors from the reviews.
The Wyoming Authors Wiki seems to have been a great idea to include every author who lives in Wyoming or has done or who writes about Wyoming. But at some point the wiki will stagnate as all list becomes complete and there are vere few additions. The wiki includes links to book events and new books but for 2007 there have only been 2 new books added so farwhereas in 2006 there were 44 new books. The wiki looks a lot like a blog with a side bar with links to education, business, government, employment in the State as well as links to the library and catalogue. There is a link to an upcoming book fair in Cheyenne in the Fall. However the future of this wiki must be in jeopardy unless an effort and invitation to the community is made to contribute some information other than a list of Wyoming authors. This is a very narrow wiki with an uncertain future.
Both of the above wikis are for a controlled group of users who are required to log in, and receive permission to create and edit information.
The Bull Run Library wiki, at a first glance, looks a lot like a blog rather than a wiki especially with the links in the sidebar to resources and archives. However the word wiki is in the URL and 'Front page' and log in at the top and pb wiki at the bottom but the word wiki does not appear in the text on the page. I could not find any invitation to the community to contribute anything to this wiki and it just appears to be a page of links to other resources and library related sites and information. This wiki does not appear worth exploring futher and does not invite any user input, creativity or editing. Clearly the creators do not want any public or community input. It would be best to turn this into a blog!
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2 comments:
Hi Jane,
Funny that you and I chose the same wikis to examine. I love your heading for this post. I would say the Wyoming Authors wiki might be one of those finite wikis, set up for a project and more or less complete after a while.
Hi Jane,
I thought about your comment:
"However the future of this wiki must be in jeopardy unless an effort and invitation to the community is made to contribute some information other than a list of Wyoming authors. This is a very narrow wiki with an uncertain future."
It makes a lot of sense, however, will Wikis survive for ever, or are they just another step in technology. If for the people of Wyoming, authors, scholars, librarians, etc, the usefulness of this wiki might prove good for a long time. However, as I had previous conversations with someone who knew a lot about Wikis (Chair for the International Wiki Symposium 2007 Montreal) and had talks with Ward Cunningham who started the first wiki, they seem to believe that wikis will die in a few years, and that it will just bring something else/something new to the area of collaborative/communication tools.
So who knows what the future holds.
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