Playing around with wikis Task 16

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tutorial

Wikipedia is something I have found myself using at work for the occasional enquiry but until the last couple of days I had not played in their sandboxes or written text! After viewing several wikis including those suggested in the exercise I went back to Wikipedia and did the whole process from Intro to Sandbox(where I played around writing a book review) , To Talk Pages to Formatting (more sandboxes- a good term!) to Copying material for insertion and the requirements and date significance then onto questions. But wait there's more...Wikipedia has Wikinews, Wikiquote, Wikiversity and Wikisource.

Although I am now more aware of the process I think I would have to check any facts before refuting argument, and I doubt whether I would contribute to such a giant. On the other hand I would have been quite ready to contribute to a Book review wiki such as set up by Princeton Public Library. http://booklovers.pbwiki.com/Princeton%20Public%20Library

Maybe Elgar could set up a Book review to which others as well as librarians could contribute. This would have the added advantage of including more NZ and Australian titles which are mostly lacking in wikis and blogs and such based in other countries. I could recommend that whoever sets up such a site takes a long look at the clarity and simplicity of the Princeton Site.

In one of the first wikis I studied I read the Core competencies file - I feel that Elgar again could set up a similar wiki for the introduction and training of staff. This might not only include the type of familiarity with Millenium and Pharos but could also be updated within seconds and all staff could be "on the same page". If the greater Auckland council goes ahead, Elgar is placed to fly!

Perhaps too we could look at the sharing other libraries do. I was interested in the listing of gaming programmes for Junior level as supplied by http://libsuccess.org/index.php?title=Libraries_Hosting_Gaming_Programs With some teens unused to visiting a library this could encourage their attendance and from there, hopefully an awareness of the excitement and joy to be found in a library.

One of my recent discoveries on LibraryThing was the winner of the library catalogues 20millionth addition. His blog is Micketymoc's and he said..."If heaven exists it would look and smell a lot like Rizal Library!"

Yes of course I followed up such a wonderful comment and the library's opening page said

Rizal Library In Line with The Past, Online With The Future!