WikiLibraries October 11, 2006
Posted by karen t in Uncategorized.trackback
As Angela Kille points out in her paper, wikis are excellent knowledge management systems. She discusses how reference librarians can take advantage of communal knowledge in such ways as ready reference databases, peer resource guides, library instruction information and collaborative workspaces. Although not just for internal librarian use, Butler WikiRef includes some similar features to those suggested by Kille. It provides collaborative reviews of reference materials, includes a reference users group and even includes wikis for specific course assignments where it appears students are expected to collaborate on their projects.
Meredith Farkas also suggests library wikis for subject guides (SJCPLSubjectGuides is an example of this), annotation of the catalogue (great idea!), for internal employee communication surrounding projects and events (as seen at Bull Run Library) and even envisions the library wiki as the hub of a virtual community. Although what Farkas seems to be referring to is a community resource for everything from library events to information about housing, wikis can also be useful for more specific communities such as book clubs. Princeton Public Library BookLoversWiki is an example of a more defined community in which users can share information about what they’re reading. Unfortunately, this community only appears to exist in the summer. Perhaps letting the group continue on without as much librarian involvement or moderation would have been an interesting experiment. Trust your community, remember?
This may relate to having really excellent instructions and explanations of what the wiki is for and how to use it. In many cases it appeared that the librarian was the only one adding any content (for example this seemed to be the case at Ohio University Libraries BizWiki). Wyoming Authors Wiki does a really good job of explaining the process of adding information. A structure has been set up presumably by the library, and then the wiki relies on the community to provide the content. Unfortunately without joining their community, I was unable to check to see who was contributing information.
My conclusions about library wikis? To be successful a library wiki should be created to serve a real community information need. The librarian should act as a facilitator for input from community members by providing access to the wiki (including clear instructions and some structure where appropriate). In an ideal WikiWorld, the librarian would then stand back, offering guidance and support only as required, and let the community take over.
This may be my inner control freak talking but… allowing the community to take over scares me just a little. I think that library staff should remain involved. I think that users would have high expectations of the quality of content available via a library wiki. As the information available on the wiki (and the quality of said information) reflects upon the library and it should remain the responsibility of library staff to ensure that all content is authoritative and relevant to the context of the site.
Thanks for mentioning our Wyoming Authors Wiki!
To answer your question as to who is using it, primarily it is authors right now who update their pages. We’re working to build a larger wiki community, but we expect that will take some time.
As for the control issues — we wrestled a lot with that. We ended up purchasing a premium PBWiki package that would allow us to control individual user access. The disadvantage is that to do that, we had to set up a more involved registration process than I would like. Nevertheless, we’ve had some hardy “early adopters” jump in and use it, adn they’re helping us work through some of the initial navigation issues. I’m still hoping it will become more streamlined as it evolves.
I am able to monitor all updates to the wiki, but I no longer have to actually enter all the data, which we did with our previous incarnation of this content, the Wyoming Authors Database. While I don’t verify every single thing to make sure it’s authoritative, we believe the quality of content is good. And honestly, we knew we had a lot of outdated content in the older database format, so we couldn’t always rely on that as an authoritative source, either.
The wiki has been tremendous. We’re getting information we wouldn’t have gotten otherwise, and even the updates we do have to make in-house are easier because of the more flexible format of the wiki. If people have questions, I’ll be glad to answer them.