Workshop Day 2: A Wiki Takes a First Big Step

I feel a bit like a doctor having watched over the birth of a fiesty baby. A national association of Kazakh librarians in fact ‘delivered’ today. With very little instruction, 2 and 3 to a computer, they launched headlong into creating accounts, new pages, content, links and a more or less unified style for their new wiki-based index (my somewhat controversial word) of Kazakstani libraries. It is in fact a very elaborate, careful and thoughtful stub; it promises to grow quickly and usefully throughout Kazakhstan and perhaps more or all of Central Asia. I predict it will fundamentally change the way these librarians think about collaboration, communication, and the organization of information. You can visit the wiki at: http://kt3.exp.sis.pitt.edu/wiki/index.php/

BTW: It helps if you can speak Russian or read it through a web translation page like: http://www.online-translator.com/srvurl.asp, which actually translates some of the key words pretty effectively.

Let me just say, this was one of the best days of my life. I woke up a bit groggy and homesick, almost lamenting my presence here. The session, however, was really invigorating. The librarians are a dedicated and focused group. They like to laugh while they work. They are quick learners and extremely fluent with information technology. You can find old & new video on my travelogue “channel” at: http://www.youtube.com/docsfluency.

We had a jolly good time arriving at a consistent approach for the ‘list’ of Kazakh libraries they built. My translator Amir was key; he was indispensible on the projected lap top!