Here at the RUBRIC project we have a wiki that we make available to all of our project partners and board members. So what exactly is a wiki? The definition provided by the Wikipedia, the worlds largest and best known wiki, states:
A wiki … is a type of website that allows users to easily add, remove, or otherwise edit and change most available content, sometimes without the need for registration. This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for collaborative writing.
The wiki that we use is part of the project management software that we use. Unlike most wikis ours does require registration because it is designed to be used by only the RUBRIC project. One of the more well known wikis in the Library sector is the Library and Information Science Wiki, or LISWiki for short.
We have found that the wiki provides a very valuable space for us to collaboratively work on documents and information. One of the most heavily used sections of the wiki is the area where we have been collaborating with our project partners on questions related to the evaluation of the institutional repository software conducted as part of the project.
We have other areas where we have uploaded documentation, information about our servers, contact details of everyone involved in the project, and other collaborative areas.
Because there is typically no formal structure imposed on a wiki they do have a tendency to grow very quickly and it can be difficult to find the information contained within them. Ensuring that pages are linked together wisely and with descriptive names this type of problem can be alleviated.
One problem that we have particularly found with the wiki is that pages can become very long and very complicated, very quickly. This has typically happened where the page has been used to discuss issues and work through problems. A small project is currently under way to tidy up these pages and create a series of FAQ style pages instead.
I believe that wiki’s are indeed useful in a team environment. With the appropriate monitoring and use they can become a very valuable resource. If you were considering a wiki I would encourage you to experiment and see how it goes. They’re not suited to every situation, but they are indeed useful.
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July 26, 2006 at 16:02
We use a wiki on PBWiki to keep track of what we are doing with lint. We have a list of jobs to do, a few notes about how we are doing things and a stats page.
One of our team suggested that we have a “wiki gardener”. I love the term, and can see that you have already been pruning and planting subject trees (groan) with RUBRIC.
July 26, 2006 at 16:32
I really like using wikis. My sister and I used one to plan a recent family ski holiday. Excellent for to-do lists, what to pack, links to the ski hire place and lists of what we would hire, chalet website, what to do in Thredbo. It was great and if we plan another ski trip then some of this information will be really handy.
I can also see how easily a wiki page can become unwieldy. A wiki is ideal for the collaboration part, but once a group is happy with the content perhaps faq pages could be migrated to a blog sort of structure with categories being used to link up similar questions.
July 26, 2006 at 17:53
Hey, with a medium sized group and a medium sized project, why not go the whole hog and use a fully fledged CMS (Content Management System)? I’ve used tikiwiki for a project at work. Although it is a bit “toy” (OK, the blogs are a lot toy) it does have a FAQ module that everyone can contribute both questons and answers to..plus polls, quizzes, wiki, forums, image and file galleries etc.
July 26, 2006 at 19:09
Stop press… by co-incidence I have come across an even cooler term for someone who manages a wiki, “WikiGnome”.
July 27, 2006 at 06:43
I love wikis because they allow me to be a ‘gardener’. (The green sort, I kill
) I’ve been plodding along mostly singlehandedly trying to develop a wiki to show my colleagues how useful it can be.
My big question is, how do you get that staff ‘buy-in’, so that everyone uses the wiki? Everyone I’ve shown the wiki to agrees how useful it is and how wonderful a tool it is, and yes we need it etc but then they go back to using Word and track changes and email and my head hurts…
On a different note, just found a great list of articles on wikis as library tools, from Library Boy in Canada.
I dunno about gnomes, Sirexkat!
August 3, 2006 at 11:33
We are thinking about using wikis or blogs as a way of staff supporting one another. But without a “wiki champ” I don’t know that staff will use it. We imagine that our target group will be students who work in the library as rovers and we are making assumptions that gen y will embrace this collaborative tool. Are we being unrealistic?
August 3, 2006 at 15:20
Genywannabe, I agree, you will need a “wiki champ” to keep pushing it, and even then staff aren’t necessarily going to use it. (Yes I am speaking from experience here..)
I guess it depends on your aim – if it is very clearly articulated and there is a need for it, it may work. I dunno about the gen y thing. Keep us informed!
August 3, 2006 at 15:49
A visitor to my library (young undergraduate in library science course) recently asked what I (41 y.o – young for a librarian I suppose) was doing. I said I was collaborating with other university staff using a wiki. “What’s that?” she said.
She sounded as though she liked the idea.