Wikis: Basics, Tools and Strategies

Meredith FarkasComputers in Libraries

What you will learn

•What a wiki is

•What wikis are good for; what wikis are not good for

•How libraries and other groups are successfully using wikis

•How to get started with wikis

•Tips on developing a successful wiki

Who am I?

•Meredith Farkas

• Head of Instructional Initiatives at Norwich University (VT). Adjunct faculty, San Jose State University

• Author - Social Software in Libraries

• Columnist - “Technology in Practice” in American Libraries

• Blogger - Information Wants to be Free

• Wiki manager - Library Success, ALA Chicago 2005, CIL2008, etc.

My experience with wikis

•Looking at a way to collect knowledge for ALA Annual 2005

•A website would only collect my knowledge

•ALA Chicago 2005 Wiki

•Amazing community formed around the wiki

Library Success Wiki

•Where does a new librarian go to get ideas and learn from other people’s successes?

•Library Success Wiki: Designed to collect best practices, good ideas, useful articles and links, etc.

•Site has developed a diverse community of individuals who add content in their areas of interest.

Other wikis I’ve created

•ALA 2006 New Orleans

•CIL2006, CIL2007, CIL2008

•IL2006, CIL2007

•Buying and Selling eContent 2007, 2008

•Norwich University Research Guides

•Many other personal wikis for planning, etc.

What is a wiki?

•Content management system

•Allows people to collaboratively develop a website without any tech-savvy

•Wiki=quick (in Hawaiian)

•All community members can add to or edit the work of others

Wiki background

•Ward Cunningham and the Portland Pattern Repository

•Wikipedia

•Conference wikis, fan wikis, wiki knowledgebases

•Wikis in the library! Still often controlled access.

•Organizations jump on the wiki bandwagon

Wiki structure

•All wikis start off as a blank page

•Pages are created and connected by hyperlinks

•No ownership of pages (in theory); anyone can change the work of others

Wiki components

•Pages community members can add to or edit (example)

•Discussion area for each page

•List of all the changes made to a particular page (version control)

•List of all changes made to all pages

Wiki syntax

•Ways to format text, change color, create links, create tables, etc.

•Wikipedia editor’s guide

•Not difficult to learn, but different

•WYSIWYG integrated into lots of wiki platforms

Wikis vs. Blogs

•No one owns content

•Anyone can edit other people’s work

•No specific organization (hyperlinks)

•A person owns their post

•Only author can edit their own work (others can comment)

•Organized in reverse chronological order

Wikis vs. Blogs

•Perpetual work in progress

•Good for collaborative group work

•Posts are permanent

•Good for disseminating info/starting a dialog

Why wiki?•Easy to use

•Web-based

•Anyone can make changes

•Version control

•Findability

•Many free and open-source options

•Flexible and extensible

Knowledge management

•All organizations want to make the best use of organizational knowledge

•Most are really bad at it

•Wiki is a great KM tool

Wiki = quick

•No editing in Dreamweaver, no need to FTP into the server

•No waiting for your webmaster to update your page

•Different people can be responsible for different content areas

Collaboration

• Wikis are a great way to get patrons/colleagues to participate in building a web space

• Resource guides

• Conferences

• Book reviews

• Area Guides

• You can learn a lot from your patrons and colleagues

Why not wiki?•Too open (trust issues)

•Concerns about ownership of content

•Disorganized

•Vandalism and spam (in open wikis)

•Wikis aren’t for everyone. If control is a major issue with the site you’re developing, then a wiki might not be right for your project

Wikis in Practice

How libraries can use wikis with their patrons

•Community wiki

•Subject guide wiki

•Wiki as website

•Wiki for capitalizing on the collective intelligence

Community wikis

•Roc Wiki (Rochester, NY)

•Davis Wiki (Davis, CA)

•Arbor Wiki (Ann Arbor, MI)

•A good start: Mac Library Experience

•A great start: Stevens County Rural Library District Wiki (WA)

Wikis that build community

•Wikipedia

•Tax Almanac

Subject guides

•Ohio University Library’s Biz Wiki

•Norwich University Research Guides

•St. Joseph County Public Library Subject Guides

Wiki as website

•University of South Carolina Aiken Library

•English 10 Wiki

•Plymouth Regional High School Library

Capitalizing on the collective intelligence•Resource guides and book reviews

•ProductWiki

•Princeton Public Library’s Book Lovers Wiki

•AP World History Study Guide

•Holocaust Wiki Project

How librarians can use wikis

•Staff intranet

•Collaborative document editing

•Collaboratively-developed manual

•Conference wikis

•Knowledgebase

•Planning space for conferences

Wiki is intranet for information sharing•Most are behind the firewall or are

password protected.

•Albany County Public Library Staff Wiki

•Memphis Public Library Wiki

•Lakeview High School NCA Wiki

Collaborative document editing

•ZohoWriter

•Google Docs and Spreadsheets

•You could even use something like PBWiki

•Durham County Library Strategic Plan wiki

Collaboratively-developed manual

•Print manuals are really hard to update

•Antioch University New England Library Staff Training and Support Wiki

•North Metro Technical College Library

Conference wikis

•ALA 2005 Chicago Wiki

•ALA 2006 New Orleans Wiki

•CIL2008 Wiki

•Wikimania 2006

Wiki for professional knowledge sharing

•Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki

•Library Instruction Wiki

•Michigan Libraries Wiki

Wiki Tips: How to develop and

maintain a successful wiki

Wiki tips: Software

•Popular options for a wiki hosted on your server

•MediaWiki

•PmWiki

•Twiki

•DokuWiki

•DekiWiki

Wiki tips: Software (cont’d)

•Popular options for wikis hosted by the software company

•PBWiki

•WetPaint

•SeedWiki

•Wikispaces

•Wikia

•If you want control, no ads, etc., host the wiki on your own server

•If you don’t have server space, need the wiki for a small, time-limited project, or don’t want to maintain new tech, go with a hosted wiki

•Check out the WikiMatrix when thining about which software to use

Wiki tips: Software (cont’d)

Choosing software: What to consider

•Programming language

•Ease of installation

•Permissioning

•Spam prevention

•Ease of use

•Cost

• Version control

• Syntax/WYSIWYG

• Ability to hold discussions

• RSS

• Ability to change look

• Extensions

• Trajectory of development/support of development

When wikis won’t work: 10 questions to ask before Full

Adoption (Suarez)• from http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/km/elsua/archives/when-wikis-

wont-work-10-questions-to-ask-before-full-adoption-18809

• “Is a wiki the best technology for what I am seeking to accomplish?

• Is my community cohesive and focused enough to be able to work together?

• Am I asking my community to create a universal truth based on tangible facts?

• Is my community going to be able to agree on these facts?

• Is my community both knowledgeable and interested about the subject of the wiki?

• Does my team/community have the necessary resources to support and facilitate the participation on the wiki?

• Is the team/community capable of maintaining the wiki with a robust enough infrastructure?

• Do team/community members trust each other good enough to be able to update content on top of each other’s content without risking the quality of the knowledge shared?

• Will the team/community provide the necessary education and training materials on how to effectively make use of the wiki for that specific purpose?

• And, finally, the killer question: can the team/community perform that task at hand with the same quality and participation using other tools than a wiki? If so, why don’t you use whichever of those tools?”

Understand the culture of your population

•WikiPatterns

•Looks at the behavior patterns commonly seen in wikis, both good and bad

Wiki tips: Seeding the wiki

•No one wants to add to an empty wiki

•Also, people don’t know what to add

•Add some content to the major categories before going live

•Creating an organization scheme will prevent orphan links and chaos

Wiki tips: Education

•Wikis need lots of info for novice users

• What is a wiki

• What can you do with this wiki

• How to edit the wiki

• FAQ

• Whom to contact for more help

•Training is important

Wiki tips: Content development

•Do lots of marketing

• Focus on the functionality, not the tool

•If possible, offer trainings

•Partner with groups/people related to your mission

•Don’t do it all yourself!

•Give the wiki a grassroots feel, make it welcoming

Wiki tips: Management

•Security

• Should you require registration?

•Dealing with spam

• Bad Behavior plugin

• Monitor the wiki several times per day

• Get to know and love RSS

•Find lots of dedicated helpers!

How to deal with posts you don’t like•Guidelines

• Limit to on-topic posts

• Take a note from the Wikipedia’s policies and guidelines or the Library Success Wiki

•Get a group of volunteers to patron a public open wiki

•If you need to delete something - use discussion area to explain why things were deleted

Questions? Comments?Meredith Farkas

mgfarkas at gmail.comhttp://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress

AIM: librarianmer

Links to everything mentioned here, slides from this talk and more at

http://meredithfarkas.wetpaint.com