School+Library+Wiki

Developing a School Library Wiki
When developing your school library wiki, you will want to consider many things. Your main concern will be your stakeholders. As school libraries move into the library 2.0 world, we will want our wikis to be more interactive. Yet, we will need to offer a great deal of information as well. Adding multimedia booktrailers, podcasts, or other informative mediums are helpful. Tapping into other sites that allow interaction or even our own automation systems that allow book reviews and tagging (dreaming - if you do not have a system that allows this) is even better.

As always, if we leave the "safe" environments that we create, we must evaluate and make sure that access is granted through the firewalls that may be in place within the parameters of our schools.

Your wiki should be more than just a list of hyperlinks to existing sites. (If you use links, they should include a title for the site and be annotated.) However, some of the suggested links to include are:
 * Links to specific teacher web pages (or wiki pages) and assignments
 * Teacher recommended bibliographies
 * Library catalog (OPAC)
 * Databases
 * Local institutions that are of educational interest (possible virtual field trips):
 * 1) Museums
 * 2) Historical sites
 * 3) Zoos
 * 4) Major points of interest

AASL recommends that web sites (or in our case, wikis) should incorporate appropriate information sources, reading promotional activities, statements on policies and procedures including policies for access and ethical use. Also, web sites (or wikis) should include informational and curricular needs of the users. So, keep in mind your target audience (elementary, middle grades, or young adults). Ask yourself, “How does my wiki integrate within the school?”

Wikis should be visually appealing. Many reports that I have skimmed (notice the word selection) lately say that the average Internet reader actually reads only 20%; i.e., twenty percent, of the content that is printed on each web page. Visuals are more effective. Consider using digital photographs because these contain more points of information than clip art. This is not to say that clip art is not acceptable; just not as informative, thus holding the eye for a briefer amount of time. Animated clip art does not inform although it may stop an eye from progressing down the page. Animated clip art distracts.

Consider digital photos of the library with you in it: Book talking, searching the databases or utilizing the online catalog, or instructing using technology. These are good, action photos of the librarian. What else does the librarian do? Are there curriculum-related displays in the library? How about photos of these? Book fairs? Interactive staff development using tech? Get that camera out and take some photos!

Your wiki should be organized and contain sufficient information. Remember back to the times that you have evaluated web sites. What were the things that tipped you off to the site as being kept up?


 * Contact info; i.e., email contact
 * Copyright date that was current which indicated that the site was maintained
 * Who managed the site or who was responsible for the information on the site? Is it listed on each web page?
 * Title for the site
 * Subtitles or subheadings on each additional web pages
 * Ease of navigation from the home page and to every page within the site and between each page of the site
 * Uniformity of the site so you knew that you were still with the same site and not skipping off into unknown territory

Items that you might want to consider adding to your additional pages: (These were suggested in Jurkowski’s (2005) article on school library web sites.)
 * Book reviews
 * Ethnic groups pages
 * School lunch menus and sports news/highlights
 * Area public libraries and their news
 * Computer lab news
 * Intellectual freedom statement
 * Virtual library tours
 * State standards (ISTE standards – my suggestion b/c these are tech standards closely related to state standards, too)
 * Comments section
 * Tutoring schedule
 * Reading lists
 * Parents section
 * Collaborative lessons/plans

References: American Library Association, & American Association of School Librarians. (2003). //ALA/AASL Standards for initial programs for school library media specialist// //preparation.// Retrieved from [] Jurkowski, O. (2005). Schools of thought: What to include on your school library web site. //Children & Libraries,// 3(1), 4-28.