Wiki

The New Ulm Public Library serves the approximately 14,000 residents of New Ulm, Minnesota, as well as residents of the surrounding rural areas.  This public library is a member of the Traverse des Sioux Library System, which is a federated system of 39 libraries in south central Minnesota.  According to City-Data.com (http://www.city-data.com/), the city of New Ulm has a land area of 8.78 square miles.  New Ulm’s population is 49.1% male and 50.9% female, with a median resident age of 41.4 years.  The racial makeup of New Ulm is 97.0% white, 1.4% Hispanic, 1.0% Asian alone, 0.3% two or more races, 0.2% American Indian alone, 0.1% Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone, and 0.09% black alone. I did my collection development project for MLIS 7400 for the New Ulm Public Library, and two of the main user groups of the library at that time were adults over the age of 45, as well as younger adults with small children.

The New Ulm Public Library has a special collection regarding German Heritage.  I think this is one possibility for a good use for a wiki at this library.  The library could use the wiki to collaborate with community members in expanding the library’s collection, as well as documenting the City of New Ulm’s German heritage.  Community members could submit stories, photos, or documents relating to German heritage to the wiki.

I don't want to extend the library's budget, so for a wiki choice I’d like installable software that is free, which supports file based storage, because I don’t know if I would have a database available.  I used the Wiki Choice Wizard on the website http://www.wikimatrix.org/index.php.  After going through the question prompts, the Wizard stated “You want some installable software with a page history and commercial support which uses file based storage and is Free and Open Source.  It then gave me 17 Wikis that matched my criteria, of which I chose Boltwire.  Its development status was mature and I felt the security features were important.