Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki
From Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki
Update! Because of vandalism problems, e-mail confirmation is now required. Please enter your e-mail address when you create an account and you will be sent a link to confirm your address (after which you will be able to edit the wiki). For those who already have an account, click on user preferences (while logged in) and under "e-mail" click on the Confirm your e-mail address link. Sorry for the inconvenience.
[edit] Introduction
Welcome to Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki. This wiki was created to be a one-stop shop for great ideas and information for all types of librarians. All over the world, librarians are developing successful programs and doing innovative things with technology that no one outside of their library knows about. There are lots of great blogs out there sharing information about the profession, but there is no one place where all of this information is collected and organized. That's what we're trying to do.
If you've done something at your library that you consider a success, please write about it in the wiki or provide a link to outside coverage. If you have materials that would be helpful to other librarians, add them to the wiki. And if you know of a librarian or a library that is doing something great, feel free to include information or links to it. Basically, if you know of anything that might be useful to other librarians (including useful websites), this is the place to put it. I hope this wiki will be a venue where people can share ideas with one another and where librarians can learn to replicate the successes of other libraries.
This wiki is not run by any commercial entity and does not represent any commercial interests. For those wishing to use content in the wiki, the wiki itself (and all the content contained herein) is licensed under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Creative Commons License. Please familiarize yourself with the license before using any of the content on your own site.
Anyone who wants to add to or edit topics on the wiki can do it. You don't need to ask before making a change -- this wiki belongs to the community of librarians who use it. If you have any technical questions about the wiki, please contact its creator, Meredith Farkas. Questions about specific content in the wiki should be directed to that individual author.
If you are going to link to this wiki, please use the following URL:
Logo designed by Christopher Rios and Zandra Vlahakis.
[edit] Join the Community
When you register for this wiki, you can then add to your own user profile page. Please add your profile to the Wiki User List so we can all get to know each other!
Note: If you are going to add to the list of recommended vendors or software, please put your name on your recommendation so we know that it's not from a vendor. From here on in, we will have to delete any new vendor/software recommendations that do not have the author identified.
If you want to see recent changes made to the wiki, visit Recent Changes. There is also an RSS Feed for the Recent Changes page...
[edit] Categories
Check out the alphabetized list of categories with alphabetized lists of articles in each category.
If you add a new category, please add it to this list on the main page so people can easily find it. You can also add new pages off of the pages in each category (subpages). For example, if you want to go into depth with a "success story" about gaming, you can create another page for the details on the success story and just put a little teaser or title on the gaming page (with a link).
You can easily add a new page by putting the title of the new page inside double brackets on the front page (you can see the formatting when you go to edit this page). Then, when you click on that link, you will be taken to a new page that you can add to.
[edit] Community
- Recent Changes Page
- Tips page for getting started on the right foot
- Guidelines for Wiki Use
- Wiki User List
- Librarians who IM
[edit] Conferences
[edit] Management and Leadership
- Communications - Internal and External
- Human Resources and Labor Management
- Leadership Development and Education
- Management Ethics
- Organizational Culture and Knowledge
- Organizational Structure
- Project Planning and Development
- Strategy, Vision, and Focus
- Team Building
- Pipeline: Future Professionals
- Public Policies: Resources for Policy Creation and Review
[edit] Materials Selection and Collection Maintenance
[edit] Professional
- Conferences and Continuing Education Opportunities
- Keeping Up With the Profession
- Looking for a Job
- Publishing and Speaking
- Self-Promotion Tips for New Librarians
- Workplace Organizing
[edit] Programming
[edit] Readers' Advisory
- Definition
- Book Discussion Group Resources
- Leading book groups
- Recommending books
- Writing Reviews for Open WorldCat
[edit] Reference Services and Information Literacy
- Online Reference (IM, Web-based, etc.)
- Free Online Reference Resources
- Future of Reference Service
- Information Literacy
- Online Tutorials
- Radical Reference
- Subject Guides
- Traditional Reference Services
[edit] Resource Sharing
[edit] Selling Your Library
- Branding
- Demonstrating Impact, Value and ROI
- Displays
- Fundraising
- Marketing
- Promotions
- Annual Reports
- Newspaper columns and blogs
[edit] Services to Specific Groups
- Library Services in Academic Institutions
- Library Services in Schools
- Services for Distance Learners
- Services for the Disabled
- Services for Older Adults
- Services for the Housebound
- Services for First Year Students
- Services in a Multi-lingual Environment
- Services for the Poor and Homeless
- Services for Teens
- Libraries Services in Rural, Native, and Tribal Libraries
[edit] Training and Development for Librarians
- Staff Training
- Online Training Resources for Librarians
- Resources for Library & Information Technology students
- Library Schools
[edit] Technology
[edit] Access
- Cataloging
- Digitization
- Electronic Databases
- Institutional Repositories
- Improving Access (open_url, metasearch, metadata harvesting, etc.)
- Library Systems (integrated systems, automated systems, circulation systems]
- Online Library Card Registration and e-Card Services
- OPACs
- Physical Delivery or Courier Services
- Web Browser Extensions
- Web Services
- Widgets (desktop tools, usually based on JavaScript)
- Public Access Computer Management
[edit] Implementing Tech in the Library
- Accessibility - general hardware and software technologies and information (not Web-specific)
- Calendars
- Grants for Technology Projects
- Free/Open Source Software
- PLA TechNotes
- Providing Technology to Patrons (computers, wifi, iPods, etc.)
- Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)
- Room Reservation Systems
- Self Checkout
- Technology Planning
- Virtual Worlds
- Voice over IP (VoIP)
- Web Tips and Tricks
- Website Design
- Web Statistics Packages
[edit] Information Sharing and Education
- Collaborative Tools in Libraries (Blogs, Wikis, etc.)
- Social Networking Software
- Courseware (Blackboard, WebCT, Angel, etc.)
- Online Communities
- Podcasting
- Search Engines
- Management of the WSF Information
- Personal start-page tools
[edit] Working Together
[edit] Need help?
Please visit the Wikipedia Style Guide for instructions on how to format text in the wiki. Another great way to figure out how to do things in the wiki is to click edit on a certain page and see how things are formatted. Check this tips page if you're new to wikis and just want a quick intro on how to get started.
Not seeing the stuff you added? Try this fix.
Any questions? Contact Meredith Farkas.