Any fellow librarians out there? How do you use PBwiki?

I've set up a wiki so that the staff in the three branches of our public library can keep up with what's happening in each of the buildings. My favorite spot is the area set up to share recipes from staff parties. :)

I've set up my wiki as a weekly calendar for teachers to sign in to use the various spaces in our high school library. It's in it's second week, and some of the teachers are catching on quite well -- others are still calling for me to schedule them. I walk them through the process.
I've set up another wiki for a large committee I'm chairing so everyone can comment/add to our task list. We haven't really started meeting and I haven't given out the link to all the members yet. I'm hoping it will save me lots of data entering time! I'll let you know.

I work in a public library and I'm setting up a community calendar for our village.

What a great idea! I love the idea of using this for a community-building tool!

I agree- part of why I started working for PBwiki was because I saw how compiling my library information into a wiki made life 100000 time easier and wanted to show other people how wikis can help organize, inform, and design!

Great idea! It's often hard to share information across branches (I once worked for a library system with 26 branches). A wiki is a great way to share information when distance is an issue.

Okay, so what's the best dessert recipe you have on your wiki? I love anything with chocolate in it!

Hi, Rachel! We're using PBwiki for a staff training program on Web 2.0 services. We have also used it for an annual student assignment on government that we do every year.

I work at a computer lab in a public library. I'm developing a structure for our tutorials and frequently asked questions, and the wiki also works as a tool for collaborating on ideas like how to improve the software and hardware here. Eventually the wiki will be partially available to the public for easy access to tutorials, how-tos, links, etc.

I'm in the initial stages of setting up our PBwiki account to be our college library staff intranet.To hold: communication (meetings/agendas/minutes) and documentation (procedures, policies) and as well, perhaps it will have other value too. This type of thing is new to our staff, so it might be a while before it really takes off.

--If anyone out has an 'intranet' wiki for library staff too, I'd love to get a peak at your wiki for ideas.

I have also set up a dept.'s research guide to replace a static webpage version. I quite like the wiki version's flexibility.

Corinne- I think I would have to run this by some other folks, but write me at brook.westheimer at cincinnatilibrary dot org and I can send you the access pass. It's still non-public and definitely under construction- I am mostly on the public desk and only get a handful of hours to work on this every week.

Just signed on and using it for staff communication. Slowly building support and it's amazing how certain staff are taking to it. One person mentioned to a co-worker that she's going to get into trouble for spending too much time on the wiki! ;) So far, great information has been shared. Perhaps in a few months, they'll be ready to have a version for our public.

Hi Tara- that's awesome! Let us know when your public version is ready - I'd love to see it!

I'm a teacher-librarian at Valley Schools in Elgin, IA. I use my wiki TONS (and encourage all our teachers to utilize this). Mostly I use it in conjunction with classes I teach. Whenever I'm teaching - be it a regularlly scheduled class or one lesson, I create a wiki page & project it during instruction. I make sure students know how/where to access it, so they can return to the information at will. My wiki is linked from our school page - that's very helpful. http://learning-with-the-library.wiki.... I have my wiki set up with Wikispaces rather than PBwiki - but I have also used PBwiki and like it very much.

Two of us created a wiki that we use to collaborate with the other teacher-librarians in our district. There are about 25 of us, but all at different sites. This allows greater communication between schools.

Hi All,

I'm curious... I would have not thought that so many librarians were enthusiastic about leveraging the strength of wikis. I guess i've never really thought about what profession would be super into wikis; I guess I just assumed it would be a personal opinion on whether or not you get the wiki concept.

Do any of you have any comments on why you think wikis would draw librarians in? It makes sense, in that I would imagine a librarian who love his/her job would be all about cataloging information. It's very cool to me when I see a tool that hits a segment of people that I would have never thought about.

Hi Scott!

As a librarian and a PBwiki employee, I think I can speak for two sides here. I remember reading an article in my Information Seeking Behavior class that talked about how librarians are one of the largest groups of early adopters of new technology - I certainly think that is the case with PBwiki.

As librarians we struggle everyday with information overload and the need to organize information in somewhere other than our heads. Wikis make it easy for librarians to organize, store, and share information.

I think PBwiki has been such a big hit because it doesn't depend on huge amounts of web-savvy skills or computer programming knowledge but works well for every librarian - even the one who wished we still had paper card catalogs. It's easy and it helps us get the job done.

I have created a wiki for a high school student reading club. Every year students will choose one book to be the "Book of the Year". The wiki has pages that include past winners, a list of this years "nominated" books and a page for students to share their thoughts about the books they are reading.

I'm a primary school librarian, and I've been using pbwiki for a while now. I have links to copyright-friendly media, presentations and in-services, links for parents...pretty much everything! My wiki is here: http://squareone.pbwiki.com

I'm a school librarian and was looking for ideas to show teachers how to use pbwiki in their classes. After looking at the above ideas, I'm thinking I should use it with students myself first as an example of what can be done. Excuse me while I think this through. I have a library webpage so some of the uses described above would not be necessary but I do like the idea of starting a wiki book club. We don't have a good time at school to meet so this could be a virtual book club. Hmm.... Has anyone tried something like this?

Hi Librarian, we have a template on our educators wiki for creating a virtual book club. http://educators.pbwiki.com/Sample+Bo.... As you can see, there's space for you to put the book information and then have discussion questions. By creating a wiki page for each question, your book club members can participate. Hope this helps!

Hi everybody! I'm a librarian at a smallish midwestern University. We have two wikis; one private, for scheduling and communication between reference staff, and one public, http://fhsuresearch.pbwiki.com, to help our users navigate the library and all its resources. We just launched the public one this semester; so far I've gotten a lot of positive feedback from faculty and students. Our "real" library website is not very user-friendly, and I've tried to make the wiki much more straightforward. It keeps getting bigger and now I need to get it better organized. But it is fun to update, so I don't mind working on it.

Hre are two examples of public wikis regional libraries are using to communicate to their many librarians, library board trustees, friends of the library:
http://noliwiki.pbwiki.com/
http://flrlwiki.pbwiki.com/

I work in the ILL Department of our public library, and I created a wiki to help our reference staff research places to find materials for their patrons and the things usually required by the lending institutions. We have two regional branches and 5 smaller branches. I have a filing cabinet full of bits and pieces of information I've learned through the years and wanted a way to share that info with our staff. This way, they can access the information at any time and help me keep it current if they learn something new.

I set up a wiki to keep track of online cataloguing tools, passwords, logins, etc., as well as in-house cataloguing decisions. I also have cataloguing policies up ( which are usually static, but need updating now and again). I also embedded a delicious bookmark, so that we can share articles, websites etc.,

I have opened this edu wiki up, internationally, to share good books and good reading ideas with everyone. Your thoughts are valued. Feel free to add a book review, too.
http://booktalk.pbwiki.com

I am in library school right now, and I just started using pbwiki in one of my classes. I currently work in a library, and I am thinking about creating a wiki for my department. Anyone have any ideas on what types of things would be helpful on a department wiki? P.S. I work in circulation.

Carrie - welcome to the discussion. What library school are you going to?

I used a wiki in the last library I worked at. I used it to keep track of my frequently ordered supplies, my policies and procedures for item checkouts, my stats, even for tracking my renegade patrons.

Be sure to check out our library examples on this page: https://educators.pbwiki.com/Example+...

and check out our librarian webinars here: www.pbwiki.com/content/webinars.

Stay in touch!

Hi Rachel,
I am going to Dominican University in River Forest, IL. Thanks for the ideas for my dept. wiki. I will also take a look at the library examples and the webinars.

Thanks for the help! So far, PBWiki is great!

My wiki site is the HUB of my library! It's linked to the main website (or will be, once I revamp it this summer). It's where I collect all my resource links. ALL of my pathfinders are wikis; I have a separate administrator code, but also a student code so they can get it and add resources. It makes for some good discussions about good/bad sites, etc.

klhtlibrary.pbwiki.com

I am an elemetary school librarian. I use wikis to share information about book lists, such as those with examples of figurative language, great opening papagraphs, good to teach inference, etc. I start the lists and then teachers can add to them or I add books as I find them.

I also have a wiki to publish podcasts of book reviews that students write and video.

I also set up a wiki for all the librarians in our district so we can share info, have a central location for lists, addresses, fixes for software problems, etc.

I also use wikis as sources of handouts, resource lists, and other information that participants need during workshops. Participants like being able to access the info at home after the workshop.

I'm a librarian too, but have no idea where to start. I'd like to videotape my elementary students doing book talks, and then load them onto my wiki. Can you guide me through the process.

I saw reference to a webinar/tutorial that I believe you put together for librarians, but I can't find it on pbwiki anywhere. can you point me in the right direction?

Our Library System is using the Wiki as a Public Information Portal. We are using it to collect as much local information as possible and to encourage not only staff, but the general public as well as Local Organizations to contribute.

www.loudounpedia.org