Here a Wiki, There a Wiki

I've put off posting about the Project Play, Week 9 theme, wikis, for some reason I cannot pinpoint exactly. Perhaps it is that I am a bit sad our semester is coming to an end. I loved being in school, especially grad school at SLIS, and would always find myself somewhat melancholy as a semester drew to a close and I handed in that last paper. But, I cannot put off posting about these last assignments forever as I want to actually be recorded as completing the first semester of Project Play!

I've dabbled in contributing to a few wikis and even started and used one for the Adult Services staff at my library to complete a departmental assessment project at the request of our Director. It was handy to use a wiki for this purpose rather than a shared word document - more organized layout with different pages and links between them and less email and revised document copies floating around between staff. If I recall correctly, I was able to set up the wiki so that only invited staff could view and modify it - so it was a shared creating and editing project but only shared by selected people and not the entire world. It was over a year ago that we finished up the assessment project and I'm sure that wiki is floating out there in cyberspace feeling quite neglected. (Note to self: find address of wiki and purge if possible).

I've also been contributing to the SCLS programming wiki but not as much or as often as I would like to. I think it will be a great resource for library staff as it evolves and more information is added. It is so easy to use and add to ... the difficulty is finding time to work on it, or making time to work on it, with all of the other pressing responsibilities, deadlines, new tasks suggested, and majority of time spent assisting patrons at the reference desk. I wonder how many libraries/library staff creating and working on wikis have that work as part of their routine position responsibilities and workload? Does your library have a dedicated web/internet services staff person and/or do you assign designated focus time for staff to work on web/internet projects?

Following the instructions for this lesson, I visited wikipedia and noticed that my library is already listed. I wonder who added it?!