Wikis
A wiki is essentially a Web site that allows visitors to add, edit and remove content. It offers an easy way to publish content to the Web and to collaborate with other people.
Schedule for Week 4
OVERVIEW by Tuesday - Learn about Wikis
EXERCISE by Tuesday - Add Information to the SEMLS Wiki Sandbox with an optional exercise to add information to any wiki of note.
READING by Wednesday - Read one of the following articles:
DISCUSSION by Wednesday - Post a
comment to this page reflecting on your readings and your experience editing the wiki. To help in your reflections, you may want to look at some examples of library wikis. Think of the following questions as you post:
- How did you find the experience of editing the wiki? Did you come across any obstacles along the way or was it fairly easy?
- Do you think contributing to a wiki is something that most staff in your library could do? How about users?
- Are
there good reasons why a library should launch a wiki?
- Can you think of any ways that a wiki could be used in your library?
DISCUSSION by Friday -
- Post a comment to this page responding to at least one other comment.
- Don't forget to add a post to your blog this week and add the semls20 tag to your post. Need help with a topic? When you are done with this assignment, you will be more than half way through the Learning 2.0 program. How's it going?
EVALUATION by Friday Don't forgot to fill out this week's evaluation.
Uploading ....
-Debbie W.
The staff found out this week that maintenence of the Hyannis Library's website will be passed from a volunteer to us. Sherry has experience with websites so the big responsibility will be on her. However, I hope that I will be able to use what I have learned to help her.
Carol
I just have a few things to contribute to this week's discussion. The first point (which I think I mentioned in one of the chats) is that although it is very easy to edit a wiki, the real difficulty lies in setting up the navigation so that it is intuitive and easy for all of your users to figure out. I've seen people set up a wiki without starting it off with any navigation or links. People will be unlikely to contribute to this wiki because they won't know where to put things. Or, several different people will try to set up their own navigation that are at odds with each other. I've also seen wikis where it's just hard to figure out where everything is located. So a lot of thought needs to go into the organization of the wiki before you start a project.
There were some comments about using a wiki to promote communication with staff and/or trustees. I had a conversation with a librarian several months ago who talked about the blog his library had started to share news with staff. But staff often did not check the blog, and it wound up being printed out and left on the circ desk so that everyone could read it. I'm sure wikis would face the same kind of obstacles. I just added the following link to my semls20 Delicious bookmarks today:
http://www.cmswatch.com/Feature/190-Wiki-Myths
It talks about the high expectations businesses have for wikis changing the work culture, but that these expectations are rarely met. I think a wiki is a great idea for sharing information, but a lot of work also needs to go into changing workflows so that people check the wiki or learn to use RSS readers so that they can be notified when updates are made to the wiki. I once did an RSS workshop for a group of trustees at a library where the director was sharing updates via a blog. I'm not really sure how much success she had in getting her trustees to start tracking her updates that way. In your case, Jocelyn, you may want to try using Feedburner on your wiki's RSS feed and enabling the e-mail subscription option. Trustees would thenl have the option of getting those updates via e-mail. It really provides the best of both worlds: you can continue updating information in a way that's easiest for you, but they can continue to get updates in their preferred method of communication.
I have never thought of wikis as the best tool to integrate into an existing Web site. Instead, it's usually something you link to off of your site.
Traditionally, wikis have been a tool that focuses on content rather than design, so it is very difficult to carry the look and feel of your site over to your wiki. Of the free wikis I've tried, I would say Zoho has the best options for customizing the look so that it can look a little like your existing Web site. I did a little searching around on this topic and found that PBWiki (now PBWorks) used to have something called a wikilet that allowed you to republish wiki information on your Web site, similar to the Flickr badges or Delicious Linkrolls we saw in previous lessons. However, it doesn't look like it is available in the current version of PBWiki. I'm not aware of other wikis that provide a similar feature, but there may be some out there.
Judy's example of the Mary Ferrell Foundation wiki shows that you can really develop a Web site out of a wiki. I'm guessing they are using software installed on their own server. The free, hosted services don't allow you to do that much customization.
Since there have been a lot of questions about integration throughout this class, I'll try to pull together a separate handout that lists ways to do this for each of the tools we've covered. I try to mention it in the lessons, but it is sometimes nice to have all of the information pulled together in one place.
Deadlines will be pushed back next week because of the holiday. Have a nice long weekend!
Kathy
Our library has a staff intranet. We have just added 4 tools: wiki, blog, forum, photo collection. We have been training staff to use those tools. As far as the wiki is concerned, we have added a lot of cataloging documentation and info from a Circ Desk "rolodex."--arranged alphabetically by topic. We expect that the Circ and Ref staff members will be adding to it frequently.
We have tried to use the wiki for collaborating/editing the library newsletter. (No, we haven't gone to a blog yet.) For this recent issue, it was "too early in the game" for all the team members to "wiki." But we sure do see how it could be useful!!! Lots of e-mail edits going back and forth.
I found the readings to be very interesting. Catching up on the "history" was neat. And to know that "wiki" means "quick" in Hawaiian was a good bit of trivia info to add to my memory. (Some medical librarians have been in Hawaii this week for the annual conference; I bet they didn't learn about the word "wiki!!" Yes, not a good year for a meeting in Hawaii--plans made several years ahead...)
I found the discussion among librarians about the pros and cons of wikis to be interesting. I wonder if many have changed their minds now almost 4 years later?
But Jimmy Wales' comment about wikipedia as a "teaching opportunity" was fascinating to me! Certainly we want to teach about reliable resources and critical review of internet resources--so certainly Wikipedia is a great example for that! "Writing skills and social skills, and group consensus"??? I'm not sure users are thinking that "grandly." (We're still trying to get students to realize that "googling" is not the best research strategy--especially in medicine!!)
The examples of possible uses for wikis were interesting, and I enjoyed having a list of library wikis to sample. The University of Minnesota's wiki for staff communication and project collaboration was the most relevant example for my situation, but the others were very interesting.
Being able to "keep up" with a wiki on a daily basis would be a challenge, but would be ideal for documentation, procedures, collaboration on documents.
Another good week of "learning." Thanks!
For our staff intranet blog, the system generates an e-mail message when a new posting has been made. And that would help me with my RSS feeds too. I was glad to learn about Feedburner in one of our previous lessons.
We are trying to think of a wiki as a place to store documentation, etc that may need to be updated regularly. I am going to post our employee handbook, our disaster plan and our promotion plan to the wiki. (They are a real pain to update!) We are thinking of the blog as a place to share info with all staff that we want to keep long-term. (New school travel policy.) The "old" staff e-mail list is for things that are of short-term interest/importance: "Has anyone seen this book?" "Get time sheets in early this week." etc.
Our staff forum will be for soliciting feedback--maybe it's between a wiki and a blog? The photo collection is for getting the hundreds of photos out of online files--keeping the good ones, dropping the fuzzy one, adding tags and captions ("When was this taken, anyway? Who is that?") to assure long term value and usefulness.
More "food for thought!"
My supervisor at one of my jobs wants to create a wiki where the people in our department will post their job descriptions and directions for some of the things we do. It can be changed as needed and if a new person comes on board or if somebody is out for an extended time the others can go to the wiki for guidance. It can also be used to share our experiences at conferences and workshops. The wiki format offers so many possibilities, some which we haven't thought of yet.
I don't find the video helpful; I find the format "too breezy". Maybe it's just me.
I'm sorry that I missed the discussion this week and hope that I can make the next one.
I think it it a good tool to use for communication, because everyone can have a say.