Thing 17 - The Sandbox

I did it...not very creatively, but I played in the sandbox a little by adding my blog to the list of blogs and a favorite vacation spot--Costa Rica.

As for the potential of pbwikis at work, I think they can be employed successfully in any situation where collaborative work happens. In fact, I'd love to see more internal reference tools posted on wikis rather than having to submit content changes to Technology. The OCL Library Branch Pages would be a great beta project.

Thing 16 - Wikis

I visited the Library Success wiki, and I think it's a great skeleton that just needs a little meat on its bones. I reviewed several sections, including Programming for Adults, Team Building, Weeding Library Collections, Keeping Up with the Profession, Electronic Databases, Widgets, and Calendars, to name a few. I found a few useful websites, but in general, I felt the wiki is underdeveloped. For example, the Programming for Adults section only has a handful of ideas, but on a positive note, it does have a link to the Diversity Exchange Database, originally created by Ocean County Library. Some of the sections just contain links without explanations. I guess that's the thing about wikis--content creation is up to the users, and since I suspect these voluntary contributions are made on people's own time, it probably takes a while for some pages to fulfill the vision of the creators.

As for the Ocean County Library wiki, it seems obvious that Garnetpoint is a staff member who updates the page regularly. It's neat to have a record of what changes are made, but tracing the history is a bit mystifying. I suppose reading the changes takes a bit of getting used to--it kind of reminds me of the shorthand language used in knitting patterns.