What are Wikibooks?

• What is a wiki?

• Clicklaw Wikibooks: the origin story, featuring the first wikibook Legal Help for British Columbians

• Benefits of wikibooks: searchable, collaborative, affordable way to publish to multiple formats

What is a wiki?

• A wiki is a website that is easy to edit by many people collaborating together.

• The term wiki actually means "fast" or "quick" in Hawaiian – the idea is that updates can be made very quickly.

• Wikipedia is a popular example of a wiki.

• But wikis can be used for many purposes that support collaboration – conference websites, intranets, communities of practice, etc.

• Courthouse Libraries BC mission: to help the legal community and the public find and use legal information

• A website for the public that aggregates plain language legal information from over 25 contributor organizations

• Our program to help public libraries provide current legal information

Clicklaw Wikibooks: context

The plain language guide “Legal Help for British Columbians” was such a nice starting point for 30 common legal problems that we got copies for all public libraries in BC

Challenges

• Within a year, the Legal Help for British Columbians guide needed updating

• Without institutional support, it was at risk (the guide was published by a lawyer more or less on his own)

• We put a PDF of the guide online, but it was not very findable or usable online - at 75 pages, not easily searchable, external links not practical

• Yet the print continued to be highly valued in library settings where computer literacy can be a major issue

But as good as the Legal Help Guide was, there were some challenges

Why a Wikibook?

• We wanted a collaborative authoring environment to enable updating by many contributors

• We wanted an affordable tool: Mediawiki is an open source platform

• We wanted it to be easy for users: As it looks & feels like Wikipedia, the end user experience is familiar

• We wanted online and print versions: A wikibook is born-digital but can also produce print from the same source

We decided to turn the Legal Help Guide into a “wikibook”, using the Mediawiki platform that powers Wikipedia

We used the wiki platform to put the Guide online, opening up access to it

As the guide is now on a wiki, it can include external links to key resources

And we’ve integrated it with the Clicklaw HelpMap, to provide easy access to options for legal assistance

The wiki can be updated collaboratively over the Internet by multiple contributors

The wiki’s strong version comparison tools support collaboration, transparency