FLORIDA AUTHORS WIKI

In my real life, as opposed to my online life, I work for a public library in Boca Raton. Said library insists that the BookBitch not ever mention said library's name, so I don't since I really love my job and don't wish to jeopardize it.

That said, a few years ago I formed a Readers' Advisory Committee at said library. There are currently half a dozen of us on the committee, and several weeks ago we had an auspicious meeting.

At that meeting, I brought forward a new idea for a group project. Most of us had just completed voluntary library training on Web 2.0 called "23 Things." One of the "things" we learned about was wikis, and I thought it would be the ideal way to implement this idea I'd been kicking around for a while, a database of sorts on Florida authors.

The Lee County Library has had a list of Florida authors on their website for years, but it's just that - a list. It was not apparent at all why some of the authors were on there, or even who some of them were. Many of them, in fact. I mean, everyone has heard of Carl Hiaasen or Dave Barry, but there were close to two hundred authors on that list.

I wanted to take that idea of a centralized web location for Florida authors, but expand on it. I wanted to know why those authors were on that list. In other words, I wanted more than just a list of names. The wiki seemed like the ideal way to expand on that list. So we took that Lee County list of authors and ran with it. We are still working on this, and hopefully it will be a constantly growing and changing thing.

I hope you'll check it out. FLORIDA AUTHORS WIKI

If you are a traditionally published author who was born in Florida, resides in Florida, writes about Florida or has books set in Florida, you should be on that wiki. If you are not, please let me know and I'll add you ASAP.

All feedback is welcome.