Online community roadmap at WJ

Over the past month, I’ve worked with the folks at WebJunction to develop September’s Online Communities focus. I had the opportunity to work with some fantastic librarians/writers/bloggers and got to do some wiki evangelizing in my own two articles. It was the first time I’ve ever been involved in the publishing process and the first time I’ve had anything published since college. Given this experience, I can say with certainty that it won’t be the last thing I publish. 😉

Now you all can see the fruit of our labor on the WebJunction site. Come visit WebJunction’s Focus on Online Community for Public Libraries. There you will find an article by Andrea Mercado on how libraries can use Flickr, an article by Aaron Schmidt on blogging to create online community, an article by Sarah Houghton on IM, my two articles about using wikis in libraries and terrific content by Michael Stephens and Jenny Levine. There are also some great articles about developing and updating websites, since you really can’t put the cart before the horse. I know it would be great if every library had a blog, but it’s more important that they have a usable website!

My work with WebJunction came by way of the the Library Success Wiki, which inspired a dialogue between Chrystie Hill (of WJ) and myself, both of us passionate advocates for online communities. What started as an idea about incorporating the wiki into one of the focuses expanded into my guest editing the focus. If you’re a new-ish librarian who wants to start writing for publication and doesn’t know where to begin, I’m happy to say that my experience with WebJunction was nothing but positive.

For those I had the pleasure of working with on this thanks for your help!!! For everyone who worked on this, thank you for contributing to this fabulous roadmap to developing online communities in libraries!!! I hope everyone finds these articles as useful as I do. 🙂