Library Wikis for Fun and Profit

Huh. More time away from the front desk to work on this stuff. I knew all those sacrifices to Sol Invictus would pay off.

I've been looking at some of the things libraries have been doing with wikis, as the Thirteenth Thing. Thirteenth. Maybe those sacrifices should have been made to Beshaba instead. Funny how divinities from the Forgotten Realms have had entries in Wikipedia for years, but webcomics were denied until very recently for not being "culturally relevant". Go figure.

In any event, some of those libraries are doing some really cool things with wikis. The best seems to be St. Joseph County. Their page is, for lack of a better term, sweet. Most of the other links from the 30 Things blog are still under development. Yes, that is one of the supposed "features" of the 2.0 applications, but the flaws are highlighted on some of these pages. All you can come up with is a link? Really? At that level, the information presented is useless. Supposedly, it will become more useful in time, but only if people use it. It's a paradox. Not one of those Terminator 2 paradoxes, but the genuine article.

So that's the interesting bit. A wiki is really great, but only if it gets used. On the other hand, it will only get used if is really great. Catch-22.