David Cumming's LIS9763 Blog

For some time, the 9763 Public Library has been wondering how to deal with some of the challenges that prevent patrons from coming to the branch for events, including our monthly book club: commuting and shift work, busy lives and frequently changing schedules prevent these individuals from committing to our regularly scheduled book club hours. At the same time, we often hear requests from regular attendees for other ways to become engaged with the book club material: where can they look for reviews, are there good sites on which to get book recommendations, and is there a way to continue these discussions outside of our monthly meetings.

As a way to enhance and expand our resources on this front, we have decided to create a Book Club Wiki (http://bookclub26.pbworks.com) that has a librarian-run book review section, and a book club contributor section for those who want to read-along. 3 different book clubs are available:

Fiction and More!
Young Adult
Just for kids!

All card-carrying patrons can access the wiki and participate in one (or more!) of the clubs. The book review section is open to all, and could provide fodder for future book selections.

Promotion & “Release” for the Wiki:

To promote our Wiki, we will rely on a variety of traditional methods as well as 2.0 technologies. With our goal being to target people who don’t always have time to make it into the branch, fliers will be posted throughout the community, and potentially even in high schools. Of course we will use library-specific methods: the website, library facebook and Twitter, posters, and encouraging patron word-of-mouth. Linking to librarian blogs and wikis for the local community may also assist us in promoting this new service.

For patrons who are not familiar with Web 2.0, the library will be running a workshop each week on a different tool: wikis, blogs, and tagging. The schedule for these can be viewed on our wiki Calendar. It is hoped that by providing users with the skills and know-how to navigate these new technologies, we will concurrently drum-up business for our new project. Having a librarian dedicated to the Wiki project should allow us to ramp-up our promotional efforts if more are required, and support the wiki administration effectively.

Platform & Maintenance:

We looked at using Media Wiki, Zoho and PBWorks for our wiki, and chose PBWorks. While Media Wiki is free, we preferred the appearance of PBWorks. Two of the group members were familiar with the software before beginning the project, which played a role in our decision making, as did cost: for the purposes of this project, PBWorks enabled us to get started right away, and did not required additional charges for a 4th user, which Zoho would have done.

Additionally, PBWorks offers good value were this project to be realized in a branch. It has a various pricing plans, some of the options for which include domain names, a high number of editing users, and “lockable” wiki pages. (We have marked pages with a lock symbol that we think would be good to keep as librarian-edited for the time being.)

The club librarian will be responsible for general administration of the wiki: ensuring that files are kept in the designated folders, adding book reviews as suggested by the department librarians, keeping the non-editable pages current and up to date. They will also act as a moderator, and periodically review posts and comments to ensure that they meet the guidelines.

Elements of our wiki:

Our wiki is not just a substitute for our regularly scheduled book clubs, but it is designed to be a supplemental resource. It is also a valuable tool for training and helping the community learn social media skills. Here are some of the details on the elements found in our wiki:

• Wiki Tips and Tricks: A custom built page which describes how to use the wiki. Our easy-to-follow instructions are designed to make participation as easy as possible.
• Book Club Guidelines: This area in our book club section is designed to instruct book club participants how to interact with the wiki to best suit their needs.
• Fiction and More! Book Club: This is the wiki version of our signature book club. For each book, we have a page where participants can add questions to the book discussion and create pages discussing their impressions of each read.
• Young Adult: This page is designed to attract Young Adult readers to discuss popular books.
• Just for Kids: This book club is designed specifically for the discussion of children’s literature. Parents, guardians or anyone else interested can create pages for discussion of particular books, genres, topics or anything else related to literature for children.
• Book Reviews: This section is designed so librarians or members of the public can add reviews and useful links for any books they like.
• Rants and Raves: This page is designed for members of the community to share books that they liked and books they couldn’t stand.
• New Releases: This section is an area where librarians can add credible reviews, links, and other relevant information for any new releases. This information will not only help participants of our book club, but others interested in keeping up with news and current information on the latest books.
• Book Club Reviews: This is a section where we tell book club members more about the current and upcoming books (check out September’s book here). We post a brief description of the reviews, links to major reviews, and other useful and interesting links. All members of the wiki are free to add any links. This is done for those who want to get closer and know a bit more about the books in their book club.

Why wiki?

Obviously, book clubs don’t really need wikis, do they? So why would we bother? A few considerations came into play when putting together our project:

1. Accessibility: using a wiki allows us to bring in voices from whomever, whenever, where-ever they may be.

2. Expansion: the possibilities for expansion of this project are endless: new user groups across branches and library systems, expanded resource pages, joint-initatives with high schools to jointly promote the technology, the library, and reading.

3. Structure: after setting out clear guidelines for users, it is clear the structure of the wiki book club isn’t that different than a regular book club; read the book, tell us what you think!

4. Learning: having a librarian (or two!) dedicated to the project is a concrete way to promote potentially intimidating 2.0 technologies to the community.

Check us out online…and let us know what you’re reading!