#16 (Week 7) Wiki's and their uses in libraries

I really like the youtube clips that Commoncraft make. Very simple and easy to understand. I can see lots of uses for wiki-type set-ups in libraries, especially where people can add book reviews and the the like. I can also see it needing someone checking it regularly to make sure people are not abusing it, by changing bits.

One of the features on one of the sites was they had grouped things according to topic and then listed all relevant library resources, including magazines, articles and reports which are sometimes hard to locate. They also listed relevant websites and other on-line resources, which was very handy. If you had a group of people who came in regularly wanting similiar information you could quickly build up an area on a wiki which would help people find relevant and up-to-date information, not just the books on the shelves.

For me and the things the homework kids ask, having wiki pages on the regular (every year we study this)topics would be useful. And each time it's used newer material could be added, old stuff removed, and the kids could help with locating some of this material. I know we have the homework machine on our site, but sometimes it's not relevant to what our local schools are after. Having something that could be regularly updated and tweaked would be useful. But a lot of work and something that time would have to be set aside for on a regular basis.

I did find out there is a free language learning website called MangoLanguages on one of the sites, which is cool. I would really like to learn something but whenever I get books out I run out of time, or I don't have the right equipment to run things. I'm just popping it here so I don't forget where the site is :)