Thursday: A1 Virtual Communities

This session was attended by about 150-200 people.

Isabelle de Kaenel (Switzerland): New tools for an old challenge: can a wiki help at a service desk

What are the benefits of starting a wiki at the library?
- streamline internal processes and share knowledge
- identification of info needs
- involvement of staff (that's a real challenge)
- professional development (there's a learning curve)

The library website is not that much useful for quick reference, because it's static, has a formal publishing workflow, has a lack of participitation and is not meant to be printed out. (exactly the same is true for my library!) The wiki proved to be far more practically.

Katja Hilska (Finland): How wiki-intranet changes the internal communication?

Katja reports on a case study on wikis by the National Public Health Institute. They surveyed their staff members before and after the introduction of an internal wiki and interviewed 32 people too. Using a wiki has essentially gives everyone a vote.

[every now and then there's an huge explosion in the conference venue, some "refurbishment" processes going on here too - coincidentally :-( ]

A.J.P. van den Brekel (Guus) (The Netherlands): Space up your library: social networks and libraries

Guus recommends to not use a single social community portal (such as facebook), because users will use many different ones. Nurses use their speical one, doctors use their one (obviously Doctorshangout). Reasons, why not to ignore social networks:

- discussing, sharing, connecting, keeping current

Make flexible, tailor-made toolbars! I made these so called Web Widgets available for you. Just now Guus demonstrates the social network of this very conference: www.netvibes.com/eahil2008. His sum-up:


To boldy go where our users has gone before.

On Saturday, Session F1, 10:30, Dorine Kieft-Wondergem (The Netherlands) will talk in more detail on Netvibes: How to use Web 2.0 technologies in you library instructions.