Thursday, May 20, 2010

Finding a wiki for a library.

I do not work at a library, but I did attempt to analyze the public library I visit often.

The West Cobb Regional Library, located in Kennesaw, GA, is a public library that serves users from a large portion of Cobb County. I visit frequently, brought by my own personal needs and school needs. If this library were to create a wiki, it would need to be focused on really getting the community involved, giving many different types of age groups attention. Budget cuts are sure to be an issue, so the wiki would need to be efficient as far as maintenance. A strong web presence would be crucial to getting information out to users without being overwhelming or confusing. Anything from tutoring for teenagers to computer classes for adults could be support via video archives or announcements. It would be used as a place for sharing knowledge between user and librarian, allowing for suggestions and making information about the library more accessible. After searching through WikiMatrix, I narrowed it down to Wikia and Wikispaces, ultimately choosing Wikispaces because it seemed affordable and it also offered 8 interface languages.  It seemed to have a lot of great features to give the library a great web presence.

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