In this Webinar, Ellyssa mentioned several wiki platforms and demonstrated PBworks. I am not personally a fan of the PBworks layout, so I decided to take a look at some of the other platforms. I looked into Wet Paint, but the parent company seems to have changed into a gossip Web site. I liked PmWiki (the library I worked at in grad school used that platform), but as far as I could tell the platform needed to be uploaded to the library server. At this point, I just wanted to create an example wiki, so I wasn't ready to ask our systems department to add a wiki platform.
In the end I settled on Google Sites, as I could easily create something and have it hosted for free. I chose a simple template with a left navigation bar (I prefer clean simple Web sites) and customized the background photo. I thought about what I wanted included in the wiki and how to organize information into a small number of categories. For my top level of categories, I chose Courses, Projects, Resources, and Training.
Under the Courses heading, I listed all of the departments that we provide instruction for, with the idea that each instruction librarian could include a short summary of the instruction he or she provides for that department. I didn't want the information to be a repeat of what we already have on our Web site or in our LibGuides, but rather a centralization and summarization so that information can easily be found in one place. For example, I summarized which classes I provide instruction for and included a link to our SACs LibGuide that provides a more detailed account of what I do semester by semester as well as links to course LibGuides which include PowerPoints and materials.
Under the Projects heading, I created pages for department, shared, and individual projects. On these pages, we can update our progress on our projects and also see what others are working on in order to collaborate and share ideas if we are working on similar projects. There's also an ability to add comments, which I found useful. I saw that the PRIMO site of the month focuses on Endnote, so I added the link as a comment on our Endnote Update project page, so I would remember and so that my coworker could see the link too.
Under the Resources heading, so far I've included links for interesting articles and travel tips. My coworkers often e-mail interesting articles, but I find that they get lost in my e-mail if I don't add them to Endnote or another program. I thought that if someone had an article to share with the department, he or she could add a link to it on the wiki. I'm currently categorizing the articles by subject, but I imagine this could become cumbersome if many articles are added. I included travel tips as my department travels to satellite locations to teach. Right now, this page contains tips like when teaching in Seoul, you can take the KAL Limousine bus from Incheon Airport into the city. Finally, I included a training page in case we want to move our training materials online.
Overall, I felt that Google sites was easy to use and somewhat customizable. One thing I didn't like, however, is that each page did not immediately include a "last updated" time. While you can add a recent activity link to your site's side bar, you must manually type in when the page was last updated .
What do you all think? Have you set up wikis/knowledge bases for your library or your self? Which platform did you use? What kind of categories did you use to divide your information?
