Common Craft: Wiki This- A Model for Customer Support Using Blogs and Wikis Pointed out by Library Clips and CorporateBloggingBlog.(it took two notices for me to get this)

In a nutshell -- the author's point is that because of the forced chronological arrangement and interaction via comments of the blog, it's not good for longterm reference or best practices because the valuable nuggets get buried. Blogs are good for near realtime tracking of customer issues or other "emerging information." The author suggests human filtering (or cherry picking?) to pull these nuggets off of blogs and place them in a wiki structure for future reference.

So here's my original part. For libraries. Just about all libraries make pathfinders or resource guides. We know that they are actually seldom used and when they are used they are primarily used by other librarians. There's the idea of guided resource modules -- task related resource guides -- but I'm not sure how popular they are, either. Add this to the logs, databases, or lists that a lot of special libraries keep of information requests.

Why not have a cherry picker or filter who takes good/tough/rare questions from these logs or databases, and adds them to a FAQ wiki, under hierarchical subject headings, in place of resource guides? This would have to be searchable -- from everywhere. If you put a search in on the library's home page, or lists of databases, or journals -- there it is. Even better, if your org has communities of practice wikis or portals or project wikis, answer the question on the customer's wiki.

Update (later that same day): What about all of the absolutely wonderful information found on the library listservs like CHEM-INF? Yes, you can search the archives, but wouldn't it be nice to have a wiki for all the listserv members so when an issue is sorted out and a final summary post is made, a wiki page can be updated to list the best resources for the question and even the answer. Hmmmm.  ¶ 3:14 PM| |cites (technorati) |