Wiki, that's a good name for a cat...

Well, well well.. what did I think of wikis?

I think these applications would be amongst the most useful for us. A wiki would be great for a book group, or to keep lists of subject links. I read a comment in one of these articles that the use of a wiki was great for these type of pages as it allows users access to fix dead links, and add things they thought were useful. I think this is a big advantage for libraries, as there are so many demands on our time, it's hard to keep up with updating webpages, checking links etc. We can get help with adding and updating information, and most importantly, users get involved, and ensure that the content is what they're interested in. They also get the opportunity to interact with staff and with each other.

It would also be great for sharing of information amongst staff. Email can be a bit clunky. People often get email which isn't really relevant to them. With a wiki staff could share ideas and information freely, without impinging on other's time unecessarily.

Once I started looking at places to make Wikis, I ended up at Wikipedia (...yeah, I know), which listed, at a rough count, 86 places to go! At this point I freaked out a bit and scurried back to the video on the Learning 2.0 page, which ended with a nice tidy list of 3 places. Ahhhh.

I think I'm getting a bit stretched at this point. I'm starting to forget which feature I saw on which bit of software. Now that I've been through these exercises, I have a Delicious account, a Bloglines account, a technorati account, plus all the other stuff. I don't think I could keep using them all. Some of them seem to do similar things, but in different ways, and it seems to me you need to use them quite often to really understand how they work and get the most out of them. Oh boy. I think I'll go and read a book.