Thing #10: Wikis

Our library has a wiki for our staff documentation. It's creation is still in progress as staff members move documents from elsewhere onto the site. We catalogers are gradually moving our cataloging manual onto the wiki. This is a great improvement as our print version is in a sad state and well out of date. Our recent documents are on a shared drive but cumbersome to access. And if we put them on a typical web page the bulk of the work would be done by our web person. So the wiki has been a good thing.

I enjoyed looking at various other wikis for this exercise. I see great potential for the wiki world to enable knowledgeable folks whom we might not otherwise hear from to supply information in a centralized location. However, I wonder how to publicize subject-specific wikis when there's so much other information out there. Take the Minnewiki from MPR as an example: what great potential this site has to be one of top "places to go" for information on Minnesota music! But judging from my brief exploration, this site is limited in it's development so far. Musicians and other experts might take an interest in contributing if both a) they knew about it and b) they saw it as a hub where information-seekers would go. In turn, information-seekers might go there if both a) they knew about it and b) the site was comprehensive enough to make it worth their while. If my reasoning is right then we've got one of those circular things going on here. In the meantime a Google search is probably not going to take you to Minnewiki on the first results page because of the way Google's relevancy ranking works. (OK, I just checked on Google, and I was right, but like always I got a Wikipedia page near the top of the list. Which makes me wonder: maybe the Minnewiki folks should instead put their efforts into this page rather than creating a new wiki.)

I'm not sure what to do about this, but I assure you that when I rule the world I'll make it a top priority.

Back to libraries ... a wiki makes sense when the use of multiple creators/editors results in the best content. While I love some of the subject guide wikis I looked at, at our library we have individual liaison librarians who create course and subject guides and - I think - each upload them to our web site. I'm not sure how a wiki could improve on this. Perhaps creating a wiki page would be easier for someone new to creating online content? But as a tech services person I'm not much involved so I'll shut up about that before I get myself into trouble!

Finally, when introducing the concept of a wiki I think it's important to both explain the rationale and provide training. Library staff have a lot coming at them; this has the potential to seem like just another wacky new thing that they're told they should do without understanding why. Staff participation in the decision to create a wiki is in keeping with the democratic nature of the wiki concept.

Edit: I forgot to report that I did do step 3 and added to the 23 things wiki.