Stap isi

12 September 2008

Local history librarians rostered onto Wikipedia: why not?

Local Studies collections are incredibly rich assets. Much of the knowledge is unique. Many of the materials cannot be found elsewhere.

But they’re generally undervalued by just about everyone in local government.

Except librarians. No, even librarians.

Despite early access to information technology, their more recent experience has been working behind firewalls, having restricted access to rich media and using comparatively antiquated equipment. Most people at home have better access to the net than what’s available to library staff.

And I’m not sure if the enthusiasm of larger State libraries and museums for using social media like Flickr and user tagging and comments has filtered down to Council management in a practical sense – for example, adding blogging to workplans. Or rostering time for outreach (surfing the net, serendipity).

Then there’s all those great temporary exhibitions in libraries curated by local history librarians that are not captured in digital form.

But there’s a way around obstructionist IT staff, overworked webmasters and harried library managers.

Continued...

— b3rn   libraries, wikis   Sep 12, 11:26 PM   #   Comment