Wiki and Zoho Creator

This was a really informative workshop I went to led by Sarah Feldman from the Newton Free Library and Emily Belanger from the New England Institute of Art. I was a little late for this workshop, because the author signing went a little long, but luckily, I was late for the wiki portion, which I knew more about. Wikis, for those who don't know are defined in (the most famous wiki) Wikipedia as "is a page or collection of Web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language.^[1][2] Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites." Basically, they're simple looking websites that can be used and edited by multiple people and changed regularly. The Newton Free Library uses a wiki to communicate with the staff a variety of things. And, most of the software is free, such as PBWiki, (it's as easy as making a peanut butter sandwich, get it?). (In fact, the VP from PBwiki text messaged someone in the workshop to say that everyone at the workshop could get a free trial of the business version.). There are several types of wiki software to use, though, and in order to find out which one is the best for you, go to www.wikimatrix.org. Sarah pointed out the pros and cons in using wikis for staff communication. Some of the key pros were "anyone can edit" and "simple". As for cons, "anyone can edit" was also listed, as well as wrong information can be posted. For the most part, it sounds like it went very well in Newton.
My favorite part of this presentation was hearing about the software, Zoho (specifically Zoho creator) from Emily Belanger. Zoho creator according to Wikipedia (ah, now you have to look at a wiki, again. See how I did that? Clever), is "an online database / custom application development tool which allows users to create fairly sophisticated process logic without knowing how to code, simply by dragging & dropping script elements on screen." Get it? In other words, you can create your own database very easily on pretty much anything, have up to five people use it for free, and then download your findings into a spreadsheet of some kind. For example, the New England Institute of Art uses it for reference statistics, and then can sort the data by type of reference interaction, etc. Want to know how many times someone called on Friday asking for help with a crossword puzzle clue? How about the number of times someone asks you why the wireless is down? How about the number of people who asked you if you had any copies of American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld? (loved that book, by the way. Go read it.). Heck, maybe you even want to know how many times people asked where the bathroom was? Emily admitted that she is at a rather small library, but that it has worked very well. She also said that for her purposes, the free version was more than sufficient. She said that she will never go back to hash marks for reference statistics again. I started salivating, then thinking about the other ways I could use this software. (stats for Louise's and my program, for example?) I did ask Todd about it, after the fact, and he knows about it and vouched for the company. I want to try it out and use it before subjecting my staff to it, but it seems like it will be easy. I love it, can you tell? (I don't know if I want to marry it like I wanted to with Pharos. I tend to fall in love too quickly with cool software, and sometimes realize that we're better off being good friends. However, this one does look very promising).
Anyone who wants to read more about either Wikis or Zoho creator can read Emily and Sarah's powerpoint presentation. There are also some helpful hints in there regarding how to choose free software.