Fostering Collaboration with Wikis and Weblogs Darlene Fichter

Fostering Collaboration with Wikis and Weblogs Darlene Fichter Data Library Coordinator, U of S Library October 26, 2005

Overview u. Collaboration – Trends u. Examples – Weblogs – Wikis u. What to use when?

Collaboration Happens at Different Levels u. Community level – Relatively intense interactions – Rheingold - “enough people carry on public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace. " u. Network level – Interaction based around a topic or subject u. Team level – Based around a project, task, process

Tim Berners-Lee The Web is “an information space through which people can communicate, but communicate in a special way: communicate by sharing their knowledge in a pool. The idea was not just that it should be a browsing medium. The idea was that everybody would be putting their ideas in, as well as taking them out. ” Tim Berners-Lee, talk at MIT Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) 35 th Anniversary celebrations, April 14, 1999 www. w 3. org/1999/04/13 -tlb. html

Technologies & Online Collaboration – Discussion forums – Email – Instant messaging – Newsgroups – Webcasts – Web conferencing – Weblogs – Team rooms – Instant messaging – Text messaging/wireless – RSS – Wiki – Expertise location – FOAF

Enterprise Collaboration Study u. Ambrozek and Cothrel surveyed a number of corporations about their use of collaboration tools for employees and for customers – Integral to how we operate today – cannot operate without online collaboration – Past the early adoption phase and the reluctance to participate has eroded Online Communities in Business 2004: Past Progress, Future Directions. Jenny Ambrozek and Joesph Cothrel http: //www. kwork. org/Stars/ambrozek_cothrel. html

Reality Check u. Hard to quantify and measure the ROI for online communities/collaboration u. The requirements for creating and maintaining communities is poorly understood

Trends: Customers u. Continuing to expand in the use of technologies u. Different platforms and different functionality

Trends: Employees u. Narrowing to focus on team rooms or electronic workspaces and expertise location

Technology Trends Jenny Ambrozek and Joesph Cothrel. Online Communities in Business: Past Progress, Future Directions. 7 th International Conference on Virtual Communities The Hague, Netherlands. June 15, 2004 http: //www. infonortics. com/vc/vc 04/slides/cothrel. pdf

What is a Weblog? Blog/ Weblog is u. A web page containing brief entries arranged chronologically u. Can be a a journal or diary, ‘What’s New’ page or links to other web sites “To me, the blog concept is about three things: Frequency, Brevity, and Personality. ” Evan Williams (creator of Blogger)

Weblogs are More u. They have been called personal web publishing communities* u. Weblogs don’t stand alone – Relate / link to other blogs and the world – Connect people together with a common interest *Dave Winer http: //newhome. weblogs. com/personal. Web. Publishing. Communities

Weblog Usage u 90% of corporations are using weblogs or plan to use weblogs according to Guidewire’s survey in September 2005 Blogging in the Enterprise: Executive Summary from the Guidewire Group Market Cycle Survey - October 2005

Primary Uses of Internal Weblogs u. Knowledge-sharing (63%) u. Internal communications (44%) u Project management (30%) u Personal knowledge management (23%) u Event logging (23%) u Team management (20%) Blogging in the Enterprise: Executive Summary from the Guidewire Group Market Cycle Survey - October 2005

Key Benefits u. Improved internal communications (77%) u. Replacement of other exiting work processes (41%) u. Replacement of email (39%) Blogging in the Enterprise: Executive Summary from the Guidewire Group Market Cycle Survey - October 2005

Blogs & Library Collaboration: Customers

Blogs: Professional Development

Library Examples: Internal Collaboration u. Reference Desk weblogs u. Learning Commons or IT Help Desk blogs u. Team or departmental blogs u. Project or committee blogs

What is a “Wiki”? u. Web application invented by Ward Cunningham in 1994 that allows anyone to add content and anyone to edit it. “It’s a tool for collaboration, really, we don’t know quite what it is by it’s a fun way of communicating asynchronously across the network”. u. Wiki means “quick” in Hawaiian

Wikis Characteristics u. Intended to be a simple to use as writing so you can focus on the content, not the mechanics and syntax u. No HTML required

Wiki Pages Home Page edit Contact Us edit Subjects edit Databases edit u. Wiki pages look like web pages u. Anyone with a web browser can read a wiki site

Click, Type and Save edit . . . Internet Librarian 2005 save . . . Internet Librarian 2005 edit

Creating New Pages New. Name Title … New. Name … edit u. Create a new page by writing its name with at leat two upper case letters i. e. Camel. Case

Collaboration Applications u. Discussions u. Meeting notes and reports u. Shared knowledge repository u. Collaborative writing u. Course based wikis u. Communities

Wiki Examples: Wikipedia

Wikipedia: Recent Changes

Wikipedia: London Bombings u. It shows the first 923 edits to the Wikipedia entry u. Movie Link of changes

Wikipedia: Viewing History

Wikipedia: Talk Page

Wiki Gardeners u. Person who goes around tidying up the wiki, pruning, editing, organizing, and cleaning up u. Usually liked and respected

Wiki. Travel

Wiki. Fish: community Students, staff, faculty at the Auburn University School of Architecture

IAwiki: community

Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki

What Would Batgirl Do?

University of Connecticut Libraries' Staff Wiki

Ohio University Libraries Biz Wiki

Conference Wiki

MIT B-Team

Installed Wiki Software Feature Chart* *Tonkin, Emma. Making the Case for a Wiki. Ariadne, January 2005

“Hosted” Wikis upb. Wiki http: //pbwiki. com/ u. Seedwiki http: //www. seedwiki. com/ u. XWiki http: //www. xwiki. com u. Hosted Wiki Feature Chart – http: //en. wikibooks. org/wiki/Wiki_Science: How_to_start_ a_Wiki

“Enterpise Blog” and “Enterprise Wiki”

Wikis u. Unstructured Weblogs u. Default is anyone edits u. Default is by date, reverse chronological u. Anyone comments u. Management is easier: versions, rollback and change long u. Less familiar u. New entries are shown as “RSS”, edits not usually tracked u. More familiar

Want Both? u. Commercial solutions – Socialtext, Confluence u. Free solutions: “blikis” – Hosted, installed, plugins such as Moin. Mt for Movable Type

Brainstorm: Library Collaboration u. What is your purpose? – Which tool?

More Information on Wikis and Blogs u. My Furl Archive – Wikis … – http: //www. furl. net/members/fichter u. Steven Cohen’s and Jenny Levine’s Internet Librarian presentations – http: //www. theshiftedlibrarian. com/archiv es/2005/10/25/blogs_vs_wikis_presenta tion. html

Thank you u. Questions? Darlene Fichter University of Saskatchewan Libraries library. usask. ca/~fichter/