A Wikitorian Look at Wikis

I am enamored with the potential of wikis. And I love the name.

Many, many, many years ago when I was a Vicky, not a Victoria, I had trouble with both the concept of nicknames and my pronunciation of the letter V. Consequently, when asked my name, I proudly said: Wikitoria. One of my lovely grandmothers called me that for the next twenty years. With this is my background, how can I not love wikis?

Professionally, I am slowly working on developing one with a coworker for ourselves and other reference staff. The subject of this wiki? Legal resources at the Charleston County Public Library. Many of us panic when a patron asks for direction on finding legal information. The goal for the wiki is to reduce that level of anxiety. In the meantime, the creation of the wiki is causing me undue stress! Fortunately my collaborator is both very knowledgeable and very Library 2.0 savvy.

I need to pick up the pace on my contribution to the project, so this quest is very timely. Once we reach a certain point in the wiki, we'll make it available for staff to look at and improve it themselves or make suggestions for how we can improve it. Then it will be up to all of us to keep it current and useful.

Right now, my biggest problem is organizing the content. How do we present complicated information in a logical, understandable, and useful fashion? The layout and mechanics of using the wiki are momentarily of secondary concern to me.

We're using pbwiki for this project, and my collaborator did the hard work of setting up the wiki. I won't pretend that the few contributions I have made to it have been easy, but I am confident I'll master the mechanics of it.

My experience with the wiki so far, though, is that the mechanics aren't quite as transparent and obvious as I would like. But, hey, it's not a perfect world. And a wiki seems the perfect platform for this project, both in its creation, for staff input, and for everyone to help keep it useful and current.

I realize I am just rambling on at this point as another means of procrastinating. I need to get back to work on that wiki...

Just sign me
Wikitoria for Wikis!