Wahoo! Wiki websites

Almost everyone has heard of Wikipedia, but did you know you could build your own wiki website? For step #16 I explored some library wiki websites. Basically, the difference between a library's website and a library wiki website is the wiki website is a collaboration effort from users. Plus, these wiki websites are not just for patrons (although might be). Some of the wiki websites are not associated with the local government or library, but are maintained by a dedicated person who works with the library.

I looked at two library wiki websites that were suggested in step #16. The first is BookLoversWiki by the Princeton Public Library in New Jersey. I am not sure when this wiki was created, because there is not much here. There are a few reviews that are in categories with numbers in parenthesis to show how many reviews in each category (as many as 57; as few as 1).

Once you click on a category, you get a thumbnail of the book cover, a rating using so-many stars (there is a legend, but you have to go to the Frequently Asked Questions to find it), the reviewer, and the review. There is, of course, the title of the book that will link to the library's catalog. But as I already mentioned, some of these wikis are not controlled by the library, so there does not appear to be a link from the catalog to the review. I know Loudoun County Public Library has professional reviews as part of the bibliographic records. It should not be too hard to include patron reviews or links to other reviews for the item.


Another library wiki website I visited is the Bull Run Library in neighboring Prince William County, Virginia. The first thing that struck my interest is the fact that Bull Run is only one branch of the county's library system. If you read the Disclaimer, you will find that this is one example of a wiki website that is not associated with the library nor the county government.

This is a nice site with a lot of nice features. There are links to neighboring library systems, links to the library's services, links for news and entertainment, and too many more links to name.

Some features that I really liked include a link to LibraryThing, that I reviewed in a previous post. Then there is Library Elf, a site that will consolidate your library records for your family, send notices either as an RSS feed, an e-mail, or text message telling you your library items are due soon. Pretty neat.

The other feature that Bull Run Library's wiki website offers in a search tool from WorldCat that will allow you to search for items in libraries in the area, not just Prince William County. You see Prince William County Public Library system has a reciprocal agreement allowing their patrons to get library cards from the surrounding library systems.

As nice as these wiki websites seem to be, I wonder who is moderating it? What happens to the site when that person or persons stops moderating? How long should news and links stay on the site before archiving? If it is a library wiki website and it has no affiliation with the library, how do you get people to use it?

Hopefully, red tape will not prevent libraries from advertising these highly useful websites.

This thing called LibraryThing

LibraryThing lets you create your own catalog of books. It is easy to use. Simply enter the title, or author, or ISBN and LibraryThing will search Amazon or over 75 libraries including the Library of Congress to find the book. You can choose the amount of information that is entered including tags, reviews, and ratings.

I really liked this site. I especially enjoyed the Fun Statistics about myself and the Tag Cloud, Author Cloud, and Author Gallery. But I am not totally convinced on the free-form tags. I would think a good controlled vocabulary would work nicely here. After all, they are pulling from Amazon and libraries. I would think they could take the information from one of these sources. Plus, you cannot search a book by the ISBN, which seems quite odd to me. All well, maybe sometime down the line they can do something about this.

Click here for the first of my entries.

Unfortunately for bibliophiles, you can only add 200 books without paying for an account.

When I entered the first book I used the Tags to Add option, but when I checked my list after I finished, the tags were not there. Plus, the icons on the Recently Added list do not tell you what they are, not even with a mouse rollover.

I can see myself using this site and I hope others will too.