The Winterville Public Library (WPL), located in the small
rural town of Winterville, GA just six miles outside Athens, GA, opened its
doors in 1974. It is a branch of
the Athens Regional Library System.
The actual structure of the library is in an old, historic, clapboard house formerly used as a residence at the Clarke
county work farm (aka the “poor farm”).
The building was moved to its present site in the heart of Winterville
in 1974 where it was restored and turned into a library. Though the in-house collection is small
(approximately 10,000), patrons have access to over nine million books and
other materials through the PINES system, a
program of the Georgia Public Library Service.
The
library serves the city of Winterville whose population is approximately 1,200
people. It
is only open 19 hours per week and employs one library technician and one
librarian’s aid. The other 21
hours a week the librarian works at the main Athens Public Library branch. The WPL uses no social software. The librarian gets out pertinent
information through e-mails and a webpage, as well as face to face with patrons
using the library. She has a
bulletin board with a calendar full of special events mainly aimed at children.
The City contributes
$18,000 toward salaries and the Athens-Clarke County Library System pays any
additional budgetary needs. The
City also contributed the building, as well as the utilities, and any repairs
and maintenance as needed. The
nonprofit Friend’s of the Winterville Library (FOWL), which runs the volunteer-staffed
Front Porch Bookstore, located across the street from the WPL in the former
City Hall, donates every dollar they receive from used book sales and
membership fees to the library.
FOWL has donated funds for a DVD drop-box, new books, DVD’s and
furniture, as well as funds for arts, crafts, and office supplies. FOWL also gives children free books if
they participate in the Summer Reading Program.
Obviously, the
WPL is a relatively low-tech rural library. The hope is to some day to have the funding to be open
full-time and to construct additional space so it can increase the size of its
collection. Creating a wiki for
the library may help increase circulation and attendance at special events,
which could someday help to attain those funds. This wiki would need to be free and simple to use, therefore
a Free and Open Source wiki is recommended. It should have page history, so that every time a page is edited the old version of the document is kept. It should have a What You See Is What
You Get editor so that technically challenged users can contribute. No domain name or corporate branding is
needed. Comparing wikis using WikiMatrix matched up with twenty-five
wikis. Even though it might be a
bit more than the WPL currently needs, MediaWiki seems, from what I can
determine, to be the best wiki out there.
It is a free software package originally written for Wikipedia. Though it takes server space and a
deeper level of expertise, it seems to work extremely well once you figure out
how to use it. I am certain our
librarian has the knowledge and computer experience to properly manage this wiki.
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