11. Discover Wiki's and how libraries use them.

Diagram by Yes!AndSpace on Flickr.

After a week away from the 23 things (my sister in England has an ancient Apple computer but has no desire to use it) I'm disappointed in myself that I can't seem to catch up again.
I've been reading all the given information about wiki's but have avoided reading what my colleagues have said in the hope of contributing something original.
My conclusions are that for wiki's to work for the library users there needs to be a community of common interest and potential contributors need to possess the skill to or be taught how to contribute. I have no doubt, when looking at the above diagram, that wiki's could improve communication, on a given topic, between members of the library staff.
I think wiki's could be useful in the Children's library as has already been demonstrated in Deventer with the Borgloschool project and could also be used in the Historical Information Centre.
Perhaps a wiki could be used for the campaign against illiteracy(Lees en Schrijf) with an emphasis on simple language and pictures.
Having looked at several examples of library wiki's in the U.S. and the Netherlands, I decided to search the internet for some British examples, starting with my home town of York. It would appear that there are many library professionals keeping blogs and using wiki's for training purposes but so far little is being done to encourage library user participation.
I watched an interesting and amusing (if a little long) slide show by Dave Pattern, Library systems manager of the University of Huddersfield. It's okay to play.
Finally, I looked at the '23 Dingen del.icio.us' page at the tag 'wiki' and I discovered, for all those of you who are already worrying about what to do with yourself after the 23 tasks have been completed, that there is a tag 'Wiki na 23 Dingen'!