Wikis and my trip to OLA

Wikis

Wikipedia is the wiki I am most familiar with.  I love the concept of collaboration.  At my old place of work we had an old paper diary.  Staff would note important work related comments, such as who was ill, or who was away at a conference, pick-up notes, etc.  The problem with this set-up was that you had to check the diary multiple times a day, and information that was updated could easily be missed.  A couple of us suggested we use a wiki for this task; most staff did not like this idea.  Once we moved into a building with multiple floors, it was very difficult to use the paper diary.  Staff started emailing and our inboxes would quickly became overrun with day diary comments.  Here a wiki would have been most beneficial, but again most staff refused to use this tool or participate.

With respect to other collaborative tools, I am familiar with Google Docs.  I’ve used Google Docs, in my professional work life and much more now as a student.  In my professional work life, I used Google Docs to upload documents for committee work.  As a student I used Google Docs for group project reports and presentations.  One of the benefits was the assurance that we only had one document at play and not multiple copies; also we could all collaborate together.

OLA

This week I attended OLA and really enjoyed the conference.  This year there were a number of great workshops about technology.  I attended “The How of Social Media Marketing” workshop.  The Orillia Library uses social media, in the form of Facebook, twitter, and RSS.  Ruth Berry from the Orillia Public Library spoke about the importance of libraries encouraging conversation.  She spoke about syndicating everything your audience will find useful and noted that social media is like viral marketing.   She also spoke about governed access for employees and having a good social media policy in place.  She recommended a number of various social media tools, like Shelfari, Qwidget, and USTREAM.

As an aside, I also attended an all conference session by, Neil Pasricha, author of the Book of Awesome.  This was very inspiring.  Neil started a blog called 1001 Awesome Things.   He talks about the 3 A’s of Awesome.  Here is his story about how and why he started his blog, and how that changed his life.  Can’t wait to start reading my own personal autographed copy of the Book of Awesome.