Finding a Wiki

The Philip Weltner Library at Oglethorpe University serves a community of 1,000 students (almost exclusively undergraduate), 50 faculty, and 200 staff. Like many small, academic libraries, the Weltner Library is always looking to its sister institutions for advice and support.  With no budget for formal conferences or interactions with other small colleges, the director has decided to establish a wiki that may be used by the staff of the Weltner Library as well as the librarians at Agnes Scott College, Spelman College and Moorehouse College.  Other similar libraries may be added later based on the success of the endeavor.  The librarians would utilize the wiki to discuss problems that they are having that may cross the gamut of topics including patron difficulties, budget concerns, collection development, staffing issues, exhibits and displays, etc.

MediaWiki is the best option for Oglethorpe’s Weltner Library for a variety of reasons.  Frist, it is free.  This is very important since there is no budget assigned for the wiki’s creation.  Second, using this wiki each contributor may be given a different level of permission.  For example, the directors of each college may have all-access, but other librarians may have only access to post and respond but cannot delete information or they may be able to post, respond and delete in specific areas of the site.  This could be useful especially if the directors desire a high-level discussion on a confidential topic.  Third, knowledge of computer languages is not required to post and edit pages within the wiki.  Finally, there is a calendar plug-in that could be useful if the librarians would like to easily schedule meetings between themselves.