Method 10

The first thing I tried was the SJCPL Subject Guides. I was impressed with how well the guides were organized and how much information was there, as well as the simple, but attractive, layout of the wiki. Several other libraries, such as the Grand Rapids Public Library, also show what can be done with a well organized wiki. Some ways to use wikis, including ways already mentioned are subject guides, guides to a library's collections, how to guides such as general research or genealogy research, internal staff manuals, guides to periodicals and newspapers including what is subscribed to in print and what is available via databases, and how to use periodicals in research. A library could also make use of a wiki to work out programming involving several different branches, such as organizing Christmas skits. The wiki could be used to list ideas, discuss who will take part in the skits, where and when they will be shown, what supplies would be needed, etc. The subject guide wikis that I looked at seemed similar to some of the subject guide tag lists that were seen in the lesson on tags and tagging, but the wikis seem better organized and more attractively done. Maybe one way that tags and wikis could be used by a library is to use tagging for quickly bookmarking attractive and useful websites, and wikis for a more formalized guide to resources that would include some, but not necessarily all, of the websites that had been previously tagged. On the negative side, I also observed that some of the wikis that had been created by libraries, had not been updated in several years. It can be difficult to keep something like a wiki or a web page updated regularly, but doing so shows that the information on a source can be trusted to be up to date.

I inserted the following comments into the Library Development A Dozen Ways to Two Step Favorites wiki.

In addition to many other forms of music, I enjoy opera a lot. Especially Wagner and Puccini.

A reference website I enjoy going to is http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoftheday/. There is a word of the day along with its definition. What makes it a fun site, beside learning new words, is the examples of three or four sentences given in which the word is used. The sentences are usually taken from books or magazine articles. The way an author uses a word in a sentence can give an additional nuance to a definition of a word, in addition to that supplied in the word's formal definition. At the above website, in addition to the word of the day, one can get the definition for most English language words. It also has a thesaurus, which I like to go to when I want to find a different way to say something.