case studies week 6

Bull Run Library uses a wiki to allow library users to recommend books and internet links. I think that this is great. When it comes to links users can correct or delete links which don’t work instead of e-mailing the webmaster. As library users recommendations on books and links are immediately published on the site, they know that the library values their opinions and comments. The Wyoming Authors wiki is a great way to get people who are really interested in a subject like Wyoming authors to do the research that one or even several librarians could not do as efficiently. They are also doing it for free. It also makes the library user feel more engaged and part of the library community.


Butler WikiRef also allows the library users to recommend sources, but in this case the users are University staff, faculty, students and librarians. In a University setting, where there can be deep specialization in a discipline or subdiscipline, the wiki allows specialists to share what the best sources of information are within their specialization and to keep these sources as up to date as possible.

The Ohio University Library’s biz wiki is an example of a wiki maintained by the business department at Ohio University. The booklovers wiki is interesting because it can contain different viewpoints and is less of a collaborative work. Ii think that a blog would have been better because there is no danger of anyone erasing anyone else’s comments with which they disagree and there can be an interactive dialogue as opposed to a series of reviews.

The subject guides wiki can only be edited by librarians, but users can see that it is a wiki. Allowing all librarians editing privileges in a wiki language is much more efficient that having only one web editor. I assume that the USC Aiken Gregg-Graniteville Library site is a wiki where editing privileges are restricted to librarians. There is no obvious place to click to edit the site. Again allowing all the librarians in the different subject specialties to edit the site is more efficient than having this task delegated to one librarian.