Wikis are another wonderful tool available for sharing information that can provide more flexibility than a blog. The wiki lends itself to many contributors. A wiki would be ideal for sharing information gathered by a committee or creating and editing a policy or procedure that many would contribute parts to. Of course, Wikipedia has certainly shown how much information can be contributed. When not all contributors are vetted, a varied range of styles and accuracy can result. Subject guides for a library seem to be a great use of a wiki. Individual subject specialists could contribute material they are expert in. The subject guides could easily link to Internet sites and or even the library's catalog. This ability enhances the usefulness of a static subject guide. Being able to direct a patron to a section of a subject guide would allow the patron to print out only what he or she needs.
It was interesting that all of the subject guides and many other documents are in an outline form. There is a general contents of topics at top and then you can click down to the page that discusses this topic. It would be a nice feature if a gadget could be created to index key words on the pages contained in a particular wiki and you could add a search box to the wiki page.
Most of the library sites restricted access to the discussion section which seems a shame on one hand, but probably the wisest thing to do. It is also a neat feature being able to look back at the history of a page and see who made changes and when they were made. This would be handy in certain instances.
Editing and saving to a wiki is a very simple process. The items compiled in a wiki can be easily reformatted and rearranged to a document that is most logical and useful. Expansion of wikis to future topics and additional contents allows a wiki to be a work in progress.
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