Welcome to LibraryWikis!

LibraryWikis is a wiki about wikis used in libraries. It is a place for learning about and sharing examples of library wikis. The wiki is a companion to a research article to be published within the September 2007 issue of Information Technology and Libraries. The author of the wiki is Matthew Bejune, Assistant Professor of Library Science, Purdue University Libraries, and Doctoral student at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He can be reached at mbejune@purdue.edu.

Members of the library community are invited to contribute to this wiki by editing or creating new pages. To do so, click Edit Page or Create a New Page. You will be asked for a password which is LWcontrib and your name and email address.

About the Article

Citation: Bejune, Matthew M. (2007). Wikis in Libraries. Information Technology and Libraries, 26(3), 27-39.

Wikis have recently been adopted to support a variety of collaborative activities within libraries. The article and the companion wiki, LibraryWikis (http://librarywikis.pbwiki.com), seeks to document the phenomenon of wikis in libraries. This subject is considered within the framework of computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW). The author identified thirty-three library wikis and developed a classification schema with four categories:

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Collaboration between Libraries (45.7 percent);

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Collaboration between Library staff (31.4 percent);

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Collaboration between Library Staff and Patrons (14.3 percent);

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Collaboration between Patrons (8.6 percent).

Examples of library wikis are presented within the article, as is a discussion for why wikis are primarily utilized within categories I and II and not within categories III and IV. It is clear that wikis have great utility within libraries, and the author urges further application of wikis in libraries.

Wiki Examples in each Category

Here are links leading to examples of wikis in each of the four categories. If you know of other library wikis not listed here, add them to one of the categories. To do, click Edit Page. You will be asked for a password which is: LWcontrib.

1. Collaboration between Libraries
2. Collaboration between Library Staff
3. Collaboration between Library Staff and Patrons
4. Collaboration between Patrons

Presentation at 2007 ALA Annual, Washington D.C.

I made a presentation about Wikis in Libraries on June 24, 2007 at the RUSA MARS President's program, 2007 ALA Annual Conference, Washington, D.C. Here are my slides:

bejune_2007_ALA_Annual.ppt

Wiki Links

A list of articles and links to resources about wikis can be found here: Wiki Links