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By Meredith Farkas - Posted on April 8th, 2006
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Executive Summary

It can often be difficult to harness the collective knowledge of your staff. Each of your staff members has a tremendous amount of subject expertise that perhaps no one else on your staff has. Whether it is your Architecture Librarian or your Head Cataloger, it is essential that you find a way to collect the knowledge they have or risk losing it forever when that staff member leaves the library. Whether you are collecting best practices, policies, or resources used, it is important that these things are written out instead of depending on individual staff members to know them.

Wikis are the ideal tool for harnessing the collective intelligence. Wiki is Web-based, easy to set up, and allows people with little tech-savvy to add information. If you have a group of people who would benefit from sharing knowledge and ideas online, you may wish to consider a wiki for the project.

What It Is

A wiki allows people to collaboratively develop a Web site with no Web programming knowledge. Any member of the community can add to or edit the work of others. So, essentially, a wiki is a perpetual work in progress, where anyone can add their 2 cents. Wiki means quick in Hawaiian and it was developed to allow for easy and fast collaborative development of a website. Wikis usually start as a blank slate and are developed by the community of users who choose to participate. The collaborators may know each other or they may be strangers with common interests who are working towards a common goal. They are completely democratic in that anyone in the community can add to or edit anyone else's writing.

Wikis are known for being extremely easy to use. They have a very simply syntax so you don't need to know any HTML to edit a wiki. Some newer Wiki software actually have an interface just like Microsoft Word, where you can just click a button to italicize a word or to create a heading.

Wikis are simple, lightweight and are infinitely expandable. To create a new page, you just need to create a link with the name of the new page. Clicking on that link will take you to the editing interface for the new page where you can add content. Instead of having a strict hierarchical structure, wiki pages are connected by those hyperlinks and hyperlinks define the relationships between pages. Hierarchical categories and structure can be added, but the hyperlinks are central to what a wiki is.

What Can Be Done With It

Wikis are used for three primary purposes. They are used for projects in which collaboration is necessary, such as the collaborative editing of a document or the creation of a knowledge base. Wikis are known for their ease of use and quickness of use, which makes them popular options for groups whose members aren't all familiar with Web design. Finally, wikis are used for purposes of findability. With the ability to search wikis and to assign categories to pages, it is easy for people to find what they are looking for, whether it is a known item or not.

Examples

Who Should Be Using It

Wikis can be useful to any library that has a need for one. Wikis are being used in virtually every type of library for a wide variety of purposes. Right now, they are primarily being used by libraries internally, but they are also used as subject guides, community guides, and as their actual library Web site. As wikis become more mainstream, they will likely see greater use in providing services to patrons.

Wikis are an ideal tool for libraries that need to share information better internally or that need to develop some sort of a knowledgebase. They can be used by specific groups within libraries – policy development groups, reference staff, committees, etc. – or groups with members in various libraries – research teams, people writing an article together, etc. – who need to share information and collaborate online. Wikis are good for projects where quick Web development is essential and not all of the players know HTML. They are also useful for projects where the library wants to collect knowledge from library patrons (research guides, community guides, etc.).

Related Technologies

  • Blogs
  • Structured blogging
  • Databases
  • LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP)

More Information

Boeninger, Chad. "A Wiki as a Research Guide." Library Voice. July 13, 2005.

Farkas, Meredith. "So You Want to Build A Wiki?" WebJunction. September 1, 2005.

Farkas, Meredith. "Using Wikis to Create Online Communities." WebJunction. September 1, 2005.

Farkas, Meredith. Wiki World. A Webcast given for OPAL in January 2006. Podcasts of talk: Part 1 and Part 2

Lamb, Brian. "Wide Open Spaces: Wikis, Ready or Not." Educause Review. Sept/Oct 2004.

Mattison, David. "Quickiwiki, Swiki, Twiki, Zwiki and the Plone Wars Wiki as a PIM and Collaborative Content Tool." Searcher. April, 2003.

Terdiman, Daniel. "How wikis are changing our view of the world." CNET. November 15, 2005.

Tonkin, Emma. "Making the Case for a Wiki." Ariadne. January, 2005.

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