Annot8’s Wiki

Here’s the rudimentary wiki I began a few months ago with a two-fold purpose: to give me practice creating and editing a wiki and to create a supervisor’s manual for our telephone reference service. I see that pbwiki has just added some new features: spreadsheets, voice chat, a shared calendar, and video uploads. All of these would be useful for the TELIS manual – they could include benchmark statistics, video instructions on programming speed dial buttons, – wow!
Annot8tions is at http://annot8ions.pbwiki.com/

Wiki Responses

St. Joseph County Library’s Subject Guides: www.libraryforlife.org/subjectguides/index.php/Main_Page
What I liked: It is traditional and easy to read and print. The help page is integrated. The subject guides are nicely formatted in two columns.
What I didn’t like: Links are not underlined in the printed version, nor are the urls visible.

University of Huddersfield’s Electronic Resources Wiki:
library.hud.ac.uk/wiki/Main_Page
What I liked: The introduction is clear and leads to a help page. I also liked the choice of browsing by title or by subject group. Having a feedback form on every page makes the site seem friendly, and allows people to ask for help without navigating all the way back to the front page. I also appreciated the “printable version” link, because the wiki pages don’t print well from the browser window.
What I didn’t like: The dotted lines make it look industrial. I guess wikis are one of the newer forms of arranging information, so the graphic styles available to beginners are not very stylish. This wiki, as many of the others, shows a surprising lack of links back to the institutional web site. Also, the information is pretty sparse, and seems to be an eclectic collection of web sites, student materials, and databases.

University of Minnesota Libraries’ Staff Wiki:
wiki.lib.umn.edu/
What I liked: The great visual impact of the colored photo and colorblock sidebars, the links to departmental and institutional pages, the invitation to comment.
What I didn’t like: Couldn’t find anything to criticize!

University of Connecticut Libraries’ Staff Wiki:
wiki.lib.uconn.edu/wiki/Main_Page
What I liked: I thought the “random page link” was fun! It would be a good way to keep fresh information that might not be read often. I also appreciated urls on the printed pages.
What I didn’t like: The formatting requires a landscape page orientation for printing.

Butler University Libraries’ Reference Wiki:
www.seedwiki.com/wiki/butler_wikiref/
What I liked: The tips for using the wiki were helpful.
What I didn’t like: I found this wiki useless as a wiki. It seems to be trying to function as a web page without having the utility of a web page. It seems to be a gateway to their databases, but there are no links! The first paragraph claims there are reviews, but I didn’t see any. I also thought the audience was too broad – librarians, faculty, staff, students – and all could make comments about reference resources …

Open WorldCat’s wiki-powered user comments system: www.oclc.org/productworks/wcwiki.htm
What I liked: Screen shots show graphically where the wiki links will be.
What I didn’t like: Using this as an example of a wiki, when there is nothing there to look at yet! Current awareness is one thing, but it’s impossible to evaluate something until it’s working.

Created for Class

Here’s my blog for the e-library class.

The address is annot8ions.blogspot.com.

Of the five blogs I looked at, I liked the Lansing Library’s the best. It was open, uncluttered, cheerful, and had links along the side to the opac, chat, technorati, feed links, etc. The posts were varied – not all book reviews or gaming or library news, but a nice mix-up of each. I also liked the Western Springs History blog, with its links to local sites and memories of long-time residents.

I was not so keen on the one devoted only to gaming, though I bet any teen who does gaming would be interested – there was a LOT of stuff there! That library takes its play seriously!

Waterboro’s had a cute name, and I liked that they posted the login information for its newspaper links – we could do something like that for our own local paper, since even the current issue now requires a login.

Three of the five allowed comments; AADL requires registration in order to comment, but does not seem to require that the registrant be a cardholder.