Wikis

For the purposes of this week's assignment, I added North Fond du Lac's Public Library as an external link to the North Fond du Lac entry in Wikipedia, but what I'd really like to do are fix are the entries for my hometown. An early baseball player named Ginger Beaumont lived for many years in Honey Creek, a fact you would learn from his entry in Wikipedia, but the link for Honey Creek, Wisconsin takes you to a town in Sauk County. There is no entry for my Honey Creek in Walworth County, which has existed since 1836. Since it's an unincorporated community, I wouldn't be able to get the same depth of demographic information as the Sauk County page, but the Spring Prairie, Wisconsin page has an external entry to another little community within the township. I've sent for two books for more background on the history of Walworth County's Honey Creek so I can create a page for the community and return Ginger Beaumont to the Honey Creek he knew and farmed.

One use of Wikis for library staff is for cooperative projects, either staff within our own library working together or staff from multiple libraries. Instead of sending group e-mails, which may or may not be read by all, or which may not be received if someone forgets to reply to all, the work can be found and edited in one place. Everyone has the same working copy and can make their contributions as they find time. I also like the library and community sites that let users make changes, though I do like the log-in features that add some responsiblity for the changes made rather than let edits be done freely and anonymously. There's a lot that can be done with Wikis and with the software and often the hosting free, it's well worth exploring.