A couple of weeks ago, the Internet Archive’s, Open Library, rolled out a soft launch of their new web design.  I checked out the Open Library website awhile back and found it to be an interesting project, but the design of the site did not really pull me in.  Although I liked the idea of a wiki devoted to cataloging all the world’s books, I did not see how this resource could be more useful than Worldcat, LibraryThing, or Google Books when it came to locating books in libraries, for sale, or in electronic form.

While I’m still slightly unclear why another resource of this type is needed, I can now see the benefits of an open-source database as opposed to a proprietary source such as Google Books or Worldcat.  Open Library also attempts to locate various electronic formats of a book–another advantage over a scanned copy obtained through Google Books.  Where the old site only allowed a subject, author, title search, etc., the new site has added the ability to browse by subject, places, people, and time.

But it might be the new design that really makes the site work for me.  Search results used to be displayed much like they are on Worldcat, with areas to refine the search in the left-hand column.  While this was not a bad layout, their new design more boldly displays options for search refinement.  Information on the new “soft launch” site is clearly displayed, with a variety of discovery tools and graphics.  Open Library is actively looking for developers to find new ways to use their book data and transform it into other useful tools.  I can’t wait to see what they come up with.

Setting up my wiki with Mediawiki was complicated.  Nothing went wrong, everything worked as planned, but I don’t know that I could have set it up myself without detailed step-by-step instructions.  Modifying the wiki was also somewhat simple, but I did not attempt any complicated customization.  I still do not love the look of most wikis and the Mediawiki template was no exception.  I know that the template can be tweaked to produce something worth looking at, but I decided it was beyond me.  It was also beyond my current intelligence to change the navigation pane on the side.  I agree with Rodney (2.o or not 2.0…) that the navigation pane in Wetpaint was much more useful than the one in Mediawiki, but perhaps with a little tweaking, it could work.

Wetpaint was a much simpler experience.  Everything was easily understandable and creating a page was a breeze.   I especially liked their easy widgets which allowed me to insert both an RSS feed and a YouTube video.  I’m sure this is possible in Mediawiki, but seemed much more complex, so I did not attempt it.  The obvious problem with Wetpaint is that it is not hosted on a local server and is filled (REALLY filled) with advertisements.  It is hard to distinguish my page text from some of the advertisement text because the ads are so plentiful.  On the plus side, if you want people to add and contribute to the wiki, Wetpaint provides numerous ways to announce your site to others.  Since mine was just a basic template for this assignment, I chose not to pursue the announcement options.

I have used Google docs for a number of projects both personal and professional.  I find it extremely easy to use–perfect for the wiki newbie.  In fact, I never even thought about the fact that it was a wiki until recently.  I have had some problems with it, however.  When trying to export spreadsheet documents  I had problems with formatting and even lost some of my data.    I believe that Google has eliminated some of these issues, but I do worry about having important work on someone else’s server.  I was using Google Notebooks to save important notes and links for the future until I heard Notebooks would no longer be supported.  Google is still keeping Notebooks open for the moment, but who knows when it could disappear forever.

Still, even with my periodic complaints about wikis, I have realized over the course of this week that a wiki is a really wonderful tool for collaboration and a great possible resource for libraries.  Farkas discusses using a wiki as a subject reference guide and I have seen some good examples of these this week.   Boeninger talks at length about using a wiki to track interdepartmental policy decisions.  Instead of having policy materials in one person’s directory on their computer, why not make it available in a central location for all to find?  This would be a wonderful tool at my workplace, where we are divided geographically between two campuses.  Changes in policy often are disseminated to our department through emails or phone calls, leaving us searching our inbox for the correct procedure when certain questions come up.  However, I could never convince some people in our department to use this great resource because it would look to them like another technological hurdle they had to jump over.  This is one of the biggest challenges for the success of a wiki.  Another is keeping it going.  Much like a blog, users can loose interest over a period of time.  Resource Shelf linked to an article today that talks about the stagnation of Intellipedia (the US Intelligence Agency’s wiki).  Apparently, all of the people who were most likely to contribute to the wiki have done so.  Without others sharing and contributing their knowledge, the site will not grow and thrive.  This is a danger for all wikis and perhaps most Web 2.0 applications.