Wiki week ! Interesting and frustrating!

While I have really enjoyed all the reading of and about Wikis this week and can see lots and lots of potential for them in Libraries ! Books list; genre list; book reviews ; web book clubs,... to name a few. I can also see lots of potential uses in the local history/ family history area too! current research projects ; streets / parks/ reserves/name history projects ; How to research your family or your house, the potential just goes on and on!

I enjoyed seeing what the SJCPL Subject Guides Wiki had done; as someone who loves to read series, I had to check out what was on the history-related mysteries list and liked that it listed series, it also had links to author websites and also a "if you likes these books try...." list at the end! The House history research page had an article with lots of embed links for more information or fact sheets, links for access to online databases and links to other relevant collections such as archives, historical societies, universities, and newspaper archives.

While I did look at the Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki and can see this as a useful too for library administration to share and manage ideas and procedures at both a internal level and a larger sharing across an area or state, etc. I decided the Princeton Public Library's Book lovers Wiki was lots more fun and a great way to promote a summer reading program with reviews and star ratings, and sorted by genre, with added links to the library catalogue, frequently asked questions prizes, etc.

Next I checked out the Montana History Wiki. I looked into the Vertical files held by the Montana Historical Society I found that they were divided into biographical and topical subjects, they also had a file for photographers by name or company. All would be very useful for any researcher to know before they visited or wrote to the Society for more information. One name that jumped out from the biographical index was a file for one "Wyatt Earp" !

BUT what has frustrated me the most is accessing the information - the PB Wiki tour just wouldn't load on my computer at work -- I don't know if that is because it was blocked or the computer is just so slow & old (it is due for replacement! soon!) ; so after having tried a few times at work to view it I decided to try it at home again early this morning and YES my dial-up did cope with it and I did get to watch the 3min 21sec of footage ---- it only took 29minutes to load and run through completely, during which time I had breakfast, made the bed, had a shower and cleaned my teeth!

Also frustrating is waiting for the key to edit the NSW learning Wiki, now that I'm ready to do it -- I sent off an email asking for an invite before 8am on Wednesday morning and its now after 10pm on Thursday and I still haven't got and invite!

I'm also frustrated because having spent two nights out at meetings this week and working on this every other night -- I haven't read any of my waiting fiction this week and now my reserves are piling up!