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This article was downloaded by: [Northwestern University] On: 18 December 2014, At: 22:13 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Internet Reference Services Quarterly Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/wirs20 A Wiki Way of Working Caleb John Clark a b & Emily B. Mason c a Antioch University New England (ANE) , Keene, NH, USA b Interactive Telecommunications Program , New York University's Tisch School of the Arts , USA c ANE , 437 Old Wendell Road, Northfield, MA, 01360, USA Published online: 11 Oct 2008. To cite this article: Caleb John Clark & Emily B. Mason (2008) A Wiki Way of Working, Internet Reference Services Quarterly, 13:1, 113-132, DOI: 10.1300/J136v13n01_07 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J136v13n01_07 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.

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This article was downloaded by: [Northwestern University]On: 18 December 2014, At: 22:13Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK

Internet Reference ServicesQuarterlyPublication details, including instructions forauthors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/wirs20

A Wiki Way of WorkingCaleb John Clark a b & Emily B. Mason ca Antioch University New England (ANE) , Keene, NH,USAb Interactive Telecommunications Program , NewYork University's Tisch School of the Arts , USAc ANE , 437 Old Wendell Road, Northfield, MA,01360, USAPublished online: 11 Oct 2008.

To cite this article: Caleb John Clark & Emily B. Mason (2008) A Wiki Way of Working,Internet Reference Services Quarterly, 13:1, 113-132, DOI: 10.1300/J136v13n01_07

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J136v13n01_07

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all theinformation (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform.However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness,or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and viewsexpressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, andare not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of theContent should not be relied upon and should be independently verified withprimary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for anylosses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages,and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly orindirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of theContent.

Page 2: A Wiki Way of Working

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan,sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone isexpressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found athttp://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

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A Wiki Way of Working

Caleb John ClarkEmily B. Mason

ABSTRACT. This article describes how three digital tools are used incombination at a small graduate school library to create a “Wiki Way ofWorking.” The evolution and usage of three “wiki-like” working proto-cols are detailed; a shared server space with read/write permissions forall staff, an online employee schedule that all staff can edit indepen-dently, and an editable training and knowledge management wiki. Focusis on the creation of the wiki and lessons learned. A literature reviewexplores the current usage of wiki technology and how wikis are a return

Caleb John Clark was the Library Services Supervisor at Antioch University NewEngland (ANE) in Keene, NH in 2005/2006. He is currently a graduate student at theInteractive Telecommunications Program at New York University’s Tisch School ofthe Arts. Emily B. Mason is Library Services Supervisor at ANE, 437 Old WendellRoad, Northfield, MA 01360 (E-mail: [email protected]).

Address correspondence to: Caleb John Clark, #1 Bradford Lane, New Boston, NH03070 (E-mail: [email protected]; Portfolio: http://www.plocktau.com).

The authors specially thank Laura Goldblatt and the ace research librarians, SharonBrown, Cary Jardine and Jean Amaral, master of all things Interlibrary Loan, CathyBoswell and their boss Marcy Leversee, for giving them the freedom to change the way theFront Desk staff worked. The authors offer many thanks to the staff and work-study stu-dents (who are the writers and editors of the server, schedule, and wiki): Abby Clark,Alexis Clark, Dan Cohen, Erika Cooper, Richard Curtis, James Erard, Susan Danielson,Crystal Heide, Laura Hilborn, Joslyn Homberg, Matt Jardine, Seth Long, GabrielleMcWhorter, Corinna Photos, Marnie Record, Angie Viands, Becky Wagner, and TomWansleben.

Internet Reference Services Quarterly, Vol. 13(1) 2008Available online at http://irsq.haworthpress.com

© 2008 by The Haworth Press. All rights reserved.doi:10.1300/J136v13n01_07 113

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to some of the founding ideas behind early hypertext and the inventionof the Web. doi:10.1300/J136v13n01_07 [Article copies available for a fee fromThe Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address:<[email protected]> Website: <http://www.HaworthPress.com>© 2008 by The Haworth Press. All rights reserved.]

KEYWORDS. Wiki, training, train, manage, library, knowledge man-agement, server, schedule, staff, work-study, front desk, media services,audio-visual, university, Antioch

INTRODUCTION

A shift has taken place at the Antioch University New England (ANE)Library in the way its employees collect, store, and access information.Although this shift was subtle in its implementation, it was deliberateand it revolutionized the ANE Library’s operations.

The need to create a new system of managing information and train-ing became clear at the ANE Library in September 2005, with the ar-rival of a new Library Services Supervisor (Caleb John Clark) and anunprecedented number of work-study students. ANE is a small graduateschool in Keene, NH. It serves the residential and distance-learningneeds of roughly 1,200 students. The school is home to a small, focusedlibrary with a staff that is made up of its Director, an Interlibrary LoanSupervisor, two Research Librarians, a Library Services Supervisor(Caleb Clark), a part-time Assistant Supervisor (Emily Mason), two gen-eral, part-time staff, and as many as fifteen work-study students. The Li-brary also serves as the media services department for ANE, housingand circulating all audio and visual equipment. With only one supervi-sor and 90 open hours of operation a week, work-study students are leftlargely unmanaged on their shifts throughout the academic year.

Disseminating knowledge, retaining that knowledge, and schedulingthose who put that knowledge to use posed challenges for these part-timeemployees. A system was needed that could quickly provide changing on-the-job training information and a way for employees to easily find infor-mation on all subjects pertaining to the Library’s operations. Some of thisinformation needed to be secure, although most content could be public.This system also needed to provide accessible and editable online schedul-ing to keep pace with ever-changing student schedules. The combination ofa server, a digital schedule and a wiki was the formula that was introduced.

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WHAT’S A WIKI?

Wikis are actually two things: a program that makes it exception-ally easy for anyone to edit web pages and a philosophy regardinghow users should go about that editing.

–Louridas 2006, 88

The name “wiki” derives from the Hawaiian phrase “wiki, wiki,”meaning quick. The inventor of wikis was inspired by the nicknameof Honolulu International Airport shuttles called “Wiki Wiki buses.”Wikis were invented on March 25, 1995, by Ward Cunningham whotraces his idea back to the HyperCard stacks he wrote in the late 1980s,which he modified to make linking on the Internet easier and to recordrecent changes (Wikipedia.org).

A wiki is a kind of Web site that one can simply and quickly edit usinga typical Web browser. Wikis are an important Internet format becausetheir contents are searchable, editors can easily insert links to other pages,and graphics can be added. Wikis also include a mechanism for record-ing and reversing changes that are made to its contents. Wikis often in-clude other functions such as discussion forums, visitor traffic metrics,and backup protocols. No one company makes wiki software. Accesscan vary from being free and open source, commercial and online, orby being limited and private on an institution’s server(s). A traditionalWeb site or an intranet, by contrast, can be made and updated by usingauthoring software, a content management system, or it can be hand-coded. Other forms of Web sites do not typically save previous versionsof edits. Wikis also promote usable site design by presenting the userwith simple tools for formatting text and images in his or her Web brow-ser. Adding complex multimedia and highly interactive elements is moredifficult and not part of a wiki’s core competency. Wikis can serve anynumber of people in their efforts to learn, locate, and organize dynamicinformation.

Wikipedia.org, currently the most famous and largest wiki, was launch-ed in January 2001. A look at Wikipedia’s 2006 statistics page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics) as of October 12, 2006 reveals1,427,680 article contributions in English and 83,516,931 user-generated

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edits (an average of 13.93 per page) since July 2002. There were also2,453,068 registered user accounts, of which 1,021 were administrators.Wikipedia was ranked as the 11th most popular Web site over the last threemonths (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia.org_is_more_popular_than . . .).

In addition to providing a good example of what any wiki developermay encounter, Wikipedia.org demonstrates the ease of editing, contentaccuracy, and security that any size wiki would. Wikipedia is largelyeditable by anyone. The concept of public authorship is an idea that hasput traditional encyclopedic sources on their ears. Unlike regular encyclo-pedias, Wikipedia.org is up-to-date in the extreme, changing hourly. Atthe time of this writing, Wikipedia.org was both highly valued as a freeencyclopedic resource, and highly controversial in terms of its accuracy(BBC 2006). It struggles, however, like other media outlets (YouTube,MySpace, etc.) in the new Web 2.0 environment, to figure out how to bestgather, edit, organize, and broadcast user-generated content.

HYPERTEXT

A wiki is, in many ways, what the hypertext/hypermedia communityof the 1980s and early 1990s was dreaming of–a way to write, edit, link,search, and add graphics to web pages with a free viewer/editor that workson almost any computer. Edward Barrett’s 1989 book, Hypertext, Hyper-media, and the Social Construction of Information, cites many examplesof hypermedia’s desire for a wiki.

In many ways, the notion of supporting users working togetheris an old idea in the hypermedia community. Vannevar Bush’s“memex” (Bush 1945) was meant to be shared among people inter-ested in similar subject areas. Doug Englebart’s NLS system wasperhaps the first working implementation of hypermedia support-ing collaboration. One important component was the Journal, ameans of supporting long-term group collaboration in which inter-linked designs, notes, etc. were stored and accessed by multipleauthors. (Englebart 1975; Irish and Trigg 1989, 90)

In addition, Norman Meyrowitz, of the Institute for Research in Infor-mation and Scholarship (IRIS), wrote that the reason hypertext systemshave not caught on is that they were all “insular, monolithic” systems thatwere not accessible by users with everyday computers in many locations(Barrett 1989, 107).

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Brown University’s IRIS built an “intermedia” system in the mid-1980s based on “navigational links” as they called them. IRIS was builtas an “attempt to prototype the future,” and had what they described aspermanent links. Almost as if they were forecasting the creation ofWikipedia they went on to say, “One can follow these trails of links to ex-plore a corpus of knowledge in the same way in which one might explorean encyclopedia” (Barrett 1989, 109).

In essence, these authors capture in their critiques the shortcomingsof hypertext software programs of the time that preceded the universalaccessibility of the Web.

RETURNING TO A WRITABLE WEB

The inventor of the Web, Tim Berners-Lee said in his book, Weavingthe Web, “The WorldWide Web web browser/editor was working on mymachine and Robert’s, communicating over the Internet with the info.cern.ch server by Christmas day 1990” (Berners-Lee 2000, 30). The keywords here are “browser/editor” versus “browser” which we currentlyuse to surf the Internet. Berners-Lee was talking about a browser thatwould let you edit whatever you were viewing. Imagine being able tochange the price of a product you find online, or the number of daysyour company allows for vacations as posted on their Intranet, and youget the idea. The reason edits by users didn’t last is clear.

Berners-Lee’s early editable Web existed before most people in theworld knew what a Web site was. Once the Web was out of the bag so tospeak, browsers quickly became view-only. This fundamental changein design opened the floodgates for Web expansion by enabling com-merce, news, and so many other types of content to be securely accessedfrom anywhere. Most people’s conception of the Web does not involvebeing able to change the page you are looking at. The Economist reportsthat this kind of editing even has a name, “folksonomies” versus top-down taxonomies (2006).

In an August 2005 interview, Mark Lawson for BBC News, pressedBerners-Lee, the inventor of the Web, about his thoughts on editableWeb sites. Berners-Lee responded:

The idea was that anybody who used the web would have a spacewhere they could write and so the first browser was an editor, itwas a writer as well as a reader. (BBC News 2005)

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CURRENT WIKI USAGE

Sadly, most wikis fail after an initial burst of activity due to a lack ofmotivation or management. It is challenging to get people in any organi-zation to become stakeholders in a wiki’s perpetual care, growth, andmaintenance. If the leaders of the organization do not use their wiki, if itis not part of the employees’ job descriptions, or if voluntary contribu-tors receive no attention or positive results for their work, a wiki will beat much higher risk of failure. According to Clive Thompson, a contrib-uting writer for the New York Times, “a wiki might never reach a criticalmass of contributors and remain anemic until eventually everyone driftsaway” (Thompson 2006, 11). It stands to reason that when there aren’tenough contributors to keep a wiki up-to-date and relevant, then userswill turn to other sources of more current information.

The Washington Post and LA Times have experienced failures ofwikis due to vandalism (Economist 2006). Failures have also occurredin certain environments such as classrooms where control is not totallyin the hands of the editors or when motivation among the group is low orwanes after initial excitement (Kairosnews 2004).

Sometimes, however, wikis die purposefully. The co-author of thispaper, Caleb Clark, is at the time of this writing one of 230 students atthe Tisch School of the Arts, Interactive Telecommunications Program(ITP) at New York University. He reports that staff set up password pro-tected wikis for each class. Each professor uploads his or her syllabusand the class then uses the wiki for everything from discussions to sub-mitting written assignments, posting links, photos, videos, or other rele-vant information for all to see. At the end of the class, the wiki is deleted,archived, or exported.

Although the majority of wikis do fail or expire with intention, thereare a significant number of wikis that survive and thrive, both long-termand for specific short-term projects or instruction.

A telling clue that wikis have found their place in culture comes withthe Oxford English Dictionary (OED) adding “wiki” as a word to theironline version in March of 2007. The addition included a commentfrom Graeme Diamond, OED’s principal editor of new words, “It hasbeen suggested that in some ways the OED itself resembles a wiki: itslong tradition of working on collaborative principles means it has wel-comed the contribution of information and quotation evidence from thepublic for over 150 years,” (Keizer 2007).

Academia has also welcomed wikis into the fold. A recent paper repor-ted on seven case studies of library-related usages of wikis and found

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them appropriate for state library and professional associations, libraryIntranets, or a shared knowledge base for an open source software appli-cation project. Furthermore, the number of wikis in this environment isincreasing (Chawner and Lewis 2006).

Several universities are using wikis on a university wide scale, suchas Penn State (Rathinasamy 2005) and Washington State University(Breeze 2005). Raman, Ryan, and Olfman (2005, 311) have published acase study that showed wikis, if implemented carefully and with moti-vated students, “can support collaborative knowledge creation and shar-ing in an academic environment.” The Claremont University Consortiumrecently used a wiki to help with knowledge management of disaster pre-paredness efforts (Raman, Ryan, and Olfman 2006, 1). Additionally, wikiswere found to be well received by college design students when informa-tion was hierarchically simple to navigate, employed good naming conven-tions, and did not contain too much information (Nicol et al. 2005, 36).

As the editor of IEEE Software, Christof Ebert, observes, wikis arebeing widely used in software development due to their open source na-ture and low budget implementation (Louridas 2006, 88). Corporationslike Nokia are finding that they are useful for archiving documents, track-ing workflow, and letting users see project management communicationsin one central location (Goodnoe 2006). The Canadian MeteorologicalSociety has 100 staffers using a wiki after testing proved successfulenough to make it an officially implemented software tool (Goodnoe2006). One construction and maintenance company with 3,000 employ-ees uses a wiki to store information needed by more than one person tolet all employees edit one central document and access it via a search en-gine. This process is significantly faster than searching though e-mails,servers, or out-of-date intranets (Rivkin 2006). According to John SeelyBrown, former chief scientist at Xerox Parc, top management sometimesdoes not even know that employees are using wikis, but a lot are andthey are a “bottom up” phenomenon (Taylor 2005). Social Text’s CEORoss Mayfield reports wikis help companies speed up projects by about25% (Rivkin 2006). Lucent Technologies reports success with a wiki,especially for project-related work, because it reduced workflow stepsin small controlled groups (Angeles 2004). And as Bob Tedeschi of theNew York Times reported, wikis are also being used more and more byshopping sites such as Amazon.com (Tedeschi 2006).

Wiki’s have even been used by British publisher Penguin as an ex-periment in massive group writing with the first Wiki novel at www.amillionpenguins.com. They have no predictions as to the quality of theresulting novel (Stutz 2007).

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Finally, the intelligence community itself seems to be considering theadvantages of wiki technology. In 2004, a paper entitled “The Wiki andthe Blog: Toward a Complex Adaptive Intelligence Community,” re-ceived the intelligence community’s Galileo Award (Andrus 2005, 1).This paper argues that the insular organizational structures of the vari-ous intelligence agencies inherently limit the scope and speed withwhich intelligence officers can collect and interpret seemingly disparateinformation. To employ the use of wikis among intelligence officers wouldallow for the pooling of information across agency lines. The use ofblogs to rate the information would leverage it. “Once the IntelligenceCommunity has a robust and mature Wiki and Blog knowledge sharingWeb space, the nature of Intelligence will change forever” (Andrus2005, 24).

A WIKI WAY OF WORKING

For ANE’s Library, the solution to training and knowledge manage-ment problems at the front desk evolved organically over about tenmonths. Solutions were driven and planned by Caleb from his experiencewith Web development and instructional design background, along withthe reality of available technology tools, staff skills, and the needs of theorganization.

Chronologically the solutions were:

1. The server, a shared space for all employee documents, printed tu-torials, policy, graphics, photos, etc. that were not appropriate fora public wiki.

2. An online schedule that all staff could view and edit from any com-puter online without clearance from management.

3. A wiki for all training and knowledge management material.

THE SHARED SERVER

Upon Caleb’s arrival, training and many other documents relating tothe front desk were in a state of confusion, poorly named and located onmultiple computers. As supervisor, he carefully reviewed all documentson each work station’s hard drive and shared network servers. Files wereconsolidated to make sure that only one copy existed of training docu-ments, policies, signs and any other usable documents, and that they wereaccurately named in terms of their files and folders. This involved many

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questions to staff and lots of comparison of versions of the same docu-ment (Figure 1).

Each and every document, then, needed to have an author, date andlocation where one could find the file. All documents were moved to di-rectories such as “printed how-tos,” “signs currently up in library” or“photos” on the shared library server. Servers are vital as a shared storagespace because they are backed up by the IT department and accessible byanyone on the network, much like a Web page. Drafting a document onyour desktop or “My Documents” directory was tolerated, but the staff

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were trained that documents had to be stored on the server immediatelyafter its completion and deleted from any workstation hard drives. Thisprevented wasted work, such as retyping a sign, policy, manual, etc., ormaking a document from scratch when one already existed. Finally,short cuts were placed on the desktops of all five front desk worksta-tions to the single-server directory so that it would become easily acces-sible and familiar to staff and “feel” as if it was on the computer theywere using. From that point on, constant daily reminders to staff to look,use, and understand the concept of one master copy of all files on a serverbecame an integral part of Caleb’s job.

THE COMMUNAL SCHEDULE

Scheduling was organized using paper and pencil on a large desk typecalendar. Although this was effective, it was clearly not a long-term so-lution.The schedule needed to be available from both home and work,backed up, and it had to be possible to retain not only what was going tohappen, but also what had already happened by recording who had work-ed and when.

Of course every student seemed to be available at different times andthey all could work only two or three five-hour shifts a week. Theirschedules changed every semester, too. Three shifts were needed eachday, consisting of two people to cover ANE’s seven days per weekschedule (88 hours of operation).

There was immediate panic. Fortunately, ANE did have digital cal-endars available through its shared online environment (First Class byOpenText Corporation). Caleb quickly learned how to use First Class tocreate a rough, online, editable schedule that could be tested and found awork-study student who liked scheduling and assigned her to the role ofschedule creation.

All staff were given full editing permissions so they could switch shiftswithout asking for approval first. As long as there were two work-studystudents on shift, staff were informed that they could make the changesthat they needed. This allowed management more time to work on otherthings besides approving schedule changes. If people didn’t show up, thenthe plan would be reconsidered. They showed up. The work-study staffended up loving the schedule because they could see it from home, andleave each other notes such as “anyone cover me here?” and anyonewho could cover could simply delete the note and add their name to the

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time slot (Figure 2). It also provided essential contact information, in-cluding that of co-workers and management. An environment of respectand responsibility also developed from the communal editing of theschedule. It made each of the students more responsible for making surethe front desk was staffed and running well. The work-study studentwho enjoyed making the schedule each semester became crucial to theorganization and was given more responsibility and the freedom tospend her shifts working away from the front desk.

THE WIKI

The wiki was developed from October 2005 to June 2006 in threemajor “versions” explained chronologically below in the language ofsoftware development (Figure 3).

Alpha–October 2005

A wiki platform was researched. MediaWiki, which powers Wikipedia,was the first choice and a version is installed in the library services super-visor’s office. MediaWiki was a wonderful prospect, but negotiationswith ANE’s IT and the Web Services departments resulted in no supportfor the server. ANE is very small and IT has limited resources for sup-porting multiple servers with multiple operating systems. MediaWiki

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FIGURE 2

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FIGURE 3

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was scrapped as an option. The ideal wiki, given ANE’s criteria, wasseedwiki.com. It is free, though at that level openly editable, meaningany viewer anywhere in the world who happens upon your wiki can editit. Editing required $110/month, which was deemed reasonable for thefuture when we might need to “lock it down” for editing only by staff, andviewing by the world. Seedwiki also has a graphic user interface thatlooked like Microsoft Word to edit pages, a backup protocol that waseasy to administer, and visitor statistics. For the library wiki to be pub-lic meant that the work could easily be shared with other Antioch cam-puses, the industry, and other colleagues in the field without logging in.This was deemed both good marketing for support of the project, andhopefully helpful to the industry.

Beta–October 2005

The initial version of the ANE library’s wiki began as a “beta” site.To begin, information was loaded into the Wiki by copying text from aWord formatted training manual and a home page with an alphabetizedlist of pages was generated. Staff were assigned time to surf the beta andprovide feedback that was incorporated as more and more of the Word-based training manual content was ported over by Caleb.

Version 1.0.–November 2005 to January 2006

For months the site was developed at Seedwiki’s free level with text-only pages. We did not experience any hacking or trouble and the easeof sharing our work with other’s via a simple Web address proved help-ful in garnering support and marketing it. Next, it became part of work-study students’ job expectations to edit, add, learn, and re-edit pages. Asmore and more information was considered appropriate for the Wikipages, its content grew beyond the original training manual’s content.Also, new work-study student employees were required to edit informationthat they found to be wrong or hard to use when they were using it to train.Thus, each new trainee improved and updated the training material forthe next trainee. A “page audit” was implemented and each staff memberwas randomly assigned to roughly six pages on the Wiki to re-checklinks, content, typos, and grammar, providing a complete check of theWiki. One research librarian also successfully made her own Wiki for aresearch seminar and one professor began a wiki for gathering online re-sources for a class using it.

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Training Sequence–February 2006

With the help of staff and recently hired work-study students, a newpage was created that consisted of a numerically prioritized training se-quence. Until this point the Wiki had been mostly a knowledge databaseorganized alphabetically. The first five new trainees were also the test-ers and editors of this training and lots of changes were made to the se-quence of what to learn when. The result was that the first ten or so stepsneeded to be learned in the first three shifts, while the remaining thirtyor so steps could be completed over the first month of employment. TheWiki as a training tool was used and reinforced as a guide rather than asa replacement for person-to-person, hands-on training.

Hacked!–February 2006

Finally, the Wiki’s open edit permissions led to a small but significanthack. Someone changed “About this Wiki” on the front page to “Aboutthis gay Wiki.” Caleb requested the minimal funding needed to makeeditors have to log-in and received it.

Version 2.0.–Graphics on Every Page–March 2006

Each staff member was given thirty days to create, compress, and up-load a relevant, educational, or at least funny graphic of their choice andre-check the pages’ content validity, grammar and usability. Caleb wrotea six-page tutorial on the protocol for doing this. A program calledSnagIt was used for screen shots and a digital camera was used for stillphotos. All images and documents were stored on the server so that theywould be available from multiple computers. Significant one on onetime was spent by the supervisor to train staff in digital media produc-tion and the concept of compression and saving high resolution originalmedia, so that images were compressed for the Web, but originals werearchived in their uncompressed form for any possible use later. Twostaff that had become naturally adept with the Wiki did more advancedpage editing when things got dicey with the visual editor and the HTMLcode needed direct editing. Caleb took care of the overall continuity andthe most difficult bugs and problems (Figure 4).

Ongoing Maintenance–April-May 2006

Staff questions were constantly referred to the Wiki and the contentwas endlessly tweaked, debated and changed. Initially, management

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had to insist that staff use and update the Wiki for their informationalneeds. Over time, staff members began to express more interest, creativ-ity and sense of accomplishment regarding their interaction with the Wiki.Each month, Caleb or Emily surfed the Google search engine and usedlink-back software to see who was linking to the Wiki on the Internet.Caleb also posted the Wiki to four library e-mail lists and the uniquevisitors per month went from the 300s to over 4,000. More off-site linksto similar resources were added to the front page as well.

Version 3.0.–April-June 2006

Antioch New England Graduate School officially changed its nameto Antioch University New England on July 1. The Wiki’s name of“ANEWiki1” was changed to “Antioch University New England LibraryTraining and Support Wiki” to reflect the name change, to be more de-scriptive and to allow for improved search ability by Internet search en-gines. Three work-study students audited all 100� pages for cross linking,

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image links, exterior links over four intense days. Visual improvementswere made to improve navigation and content consistency. Weeding wasdone to combine, extract or sub-categorize several pages and this reducedthe number of pages in the Wiki from about 120 to 100 to make it moremanageable. A backup was downloaded and saved on our server in theunlikely event that Seedwiki went out of business. One student was alsoassigned to spend more time in Seedwiki’s discussion forums so wecould become a member of the community and get help when we neededit by giving help first. A Google audit was done, logging the number ofreturns for the search strings: “anewiki1” and “Antioch University NewEngland Library Training and Support Wiki.” There were about twentylinks to the Wiki found on other sites.

Currently the wiki is humming along wonderfully with Emily in chargeand Caleb having moved on to study at NYU. The lessons we’ve learnedare as follows.

Lessons Learned

• Create a “wiki philosophy.” The synchronicity of the server,schedule and wiki all running on the same philosophy is symbioticand self-reinforcing.

• Maintain to train. Regular Staff editing fosters improved digitalmedia skills while also promoting retraining.

• Use it or lose it. Using, editing and authoring the Wiki, scheduleand server documents is not optional. It is part of the front deskstaff’s job duties. It is also in job descriptions, job-opening ads, anddiscussed in interviews before hiring. The supervisor must cham-pion this daily to keep it going, but it is worth the time.

• Usability is vital. Tools need to be easy to use as they grow. Navi-gation is kept simple–ourWiki was held to less than a 100 pagesor so by combining and editing constantly. Alphabetical andbullet lists were used for better usability. Server folder and filestructure needs to be constantly monitored to be clear and easy tonavigate.

• Classic instructional design/software development protocols wereused based on a modified A.D.D.I.E. instructional design model(Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, Evaluate). Users are en-couraged to write in the active voice with as few words as possible,concentrating on only basic skills. Staff are urged to have otherstaff test pages they work on for usability and typos.

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• The exposure of the Wiki on the Web via industry mailing lists addedto the library’s reputation on campus, in the Antioch five-campussystem, and in the industry at large.

• Work-study staff initially resisted learning about graphic productionand uploading, but quickly started e-mailing URLs of their workto friends once it was on the Wiki and volunteered to update morepages than assigned.

• Having the Wiki hosted off-site by a company not involved withANE’s IT department was simple and freed up ANE’s IT from yetanother “unfunded mandate.”

• Work-study Assistant Managers naturally emerged in the form ofstudents who liked editing the Wiki and had some technical procliv-ities. They were made “assistant wiki managers” and given more re-sponsibility and freedom.

• The inventor of wikis, Ward Cunningham, has said, “Wikis favor theauthor who isn’t skilled enough to see the whole” (Taylor 2005).We have observed this to be true. Staff do not pay attention to theserver, schedule or Wiki as a whole; only their shifts, documents, orpages they work on or need. A supervisor with management controlover all three environments is needed to keep the systems runningsymbiotically.

• “It’s got to be a fluid, ongoing conversation to work,” according toauthor Clay Shirky (Swisher 2004). And when it is, Emily andI saw daily examples of our small group of workers being moreempowered, engaged, and effective in their jobs.

CONCLUSION

Wikis and their philosophy are a heartwarming return to the birth ofthe Internet. They capitalize on one of the founding philosophies of theWeb, the ability to make one version of text and media easily availableand editable to anyone with an Internet connection and free Web browser.When viewers can edit what they see, something else happens that isbeyond the Web that we are used to–we all become potential creators.

Who will and who won’t hit the “edit page” button? Will Wikipediastay accurate and editable by all? Will the Wiki in this paper die on thevine in the coming years? Based on our experience with technology, webelieve there will be a cycle or two of hype, over-usage, and a settlingdown to using wikis and similar systems for what they do best. As

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Joe Kraus, co-founder of Excite, one of the earliest Internet search com-panies, said in a recent interview:

If you look at any technology–from Bluetooth to blogs–they havegone through this cycle of monstrous hype where there’s an abso-lute crash before they find their natural place. (Cooper 2005)

Wikis and wiki-like systems, like our server and digital schedule,seem to have a natural place in training and knowledge management atour small university library. This Wiki Way of Working has improvedthe library’s front desk employee satisfaction, training and knowledgemanagement, which in turn has improved service to students, faculty,and staff.

ONLINE RESOURCES

Includes two excellent link pages, several examples of different wiki software, andthe original Wiki.

1. Wikipedia’s wiki software comparison chart http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_wiki_software.

2. Wikipedia statistics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics.3. Angela Kille. Libraries and wikis plus general wiki resources http://angelakille.

pbwiki.com/WikiResources.4. Darlene Fichter. Wikis in Libraries: sites, resources, papers and articles, etc.

http://library.usask.ca/~fichter/wiki/.5. Ohio Learns Training Wiki http://wiki.ohiolearns.org/index.php?title=Main_

Page.6. Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki http://www.libsuccess.org/.7. Oregon Library Instruction Wiki. A collaboratively developed resource for

librarians involved with or interested in instruction. http://instructionwiki.org/.8. St. Joseph County Public Library Subject Guide Wiki http://www.libraryforlife.

org/subjectguides/.9. WikiWikiWeb 1995 active Wiki by the inventor of Wikis http://c2.com/cgi/wiki.

10. The original Wiki: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TheOriginalWiki.

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