Open Doorways: Wikis & Blogs, Blogs & Wikis

Are you using blogs and wikis? How are you using them? Have they been successful?

Chad Boeninger shared his experience with blogs and wikis at Ohio University Libraries during his session, "Using Wikis and Blogs to Promote Information Literacy Skills and Library Resources."

Ohio University Libraries has a news blog and several subject specific blogs including the business blog.

Chad suggested some ways blogs can be leveraged for libraries, including:

dynamic content
using multiple authors (instead of relying on one single Webmaster to update content)
giving others ownership of content
syndication

Some cons to blogs:

Measurement is difficult, it's hard to tell which posts are being read
RSS is slow to catch on
authors must regularly generate content
organization of archives can be difficult

So what is a wiki? Chad defines it as a Web site where the content can be created and edited by a community of users. You can use wikis as research guides, see the OU Libraries Biz Wiki and of course there is the Open Doorways Wiki.

Why would you use a wiki? It's very easy to add and edit content, wikis are searchable, there's more room for content, you can organize content by categories, and they help build communities.

The challenge for using blogs and wikis is getting the intended audiences to get involved, create and edit content and leave comments. How do you deal with this challenge?

Links mentioned during this session: