Social Software: Wikis Darlene Fichter, Data Library Coordinator, U of S Library November 28, 2005 ACCOLEDS/DLI Training

Darlene Fichter

Collaboration Happens at Different Levels  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."  Network level –Interaction based around a topic or subject  Team level –Based around a project, task, process

U of S Weblog Initiative  I worked with the campus IT project team on: –Software selection –Policy –Promotion –Training –Stage: “soft rollout”  UThink – University of Minnesota (library led institution wide)  blog.lib.umn.edu blog.lib.umn.edu  Embedded “blog this” in the licensed database results like links to citation manager

The University of Warwick: Statistics

Aggregate Tags for Your Community  University of Warwick Launch fall 2004 Blogs3,622 Posts47,872 Comments110,784 Tags4,654

Small Team Blog – Data Library Software: Movable Type

Wiki

What is a “Wiki”?  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 but it’s a fun way of communicating asynchronously across the network”.  Wiki means “quick” in Hawaiian

Wiki’s Characteristics  Intended to be simple so you can focus on the writing, not the mechanics and syntax  No HTML required

Wikis: Collections of Pages Home PageContact UsProductsRFPs edit  Wiki pages look like web pages  Anyone with a web browser can read a wiki site Illustrations adapted from Guillaume du Gardier. What is a wiki? June 2, 2005

Click, Write and Save edit save...KMWorld 2005 …KMWorld 2005  Anyone can undo any change at any time  Anyone with a web browser can edit a wiki site

 Create a new page by writing its name in CamelCase, called a WikiName Creating New Pages Title … NewName … edit NewName  Click on any WikiName to see pages that link to it

Wiki Design Principles  Openness and trust –if a page is incomplete or inaccurate anyone can edit it  Incremental –pages can cite other pages, even those not yet written  Observable –you can see the changes being made  Organic –site structure is up to everyone and it will evolve and change  More principles… Wiki Design Principles

Wiki (Jotspot) Anatomy: Features Attach a File Import Word s Send an Make a comment Invite users Changes via RSS Search

Wiki Examples: Wikipedia

Wikipedia: Recent Changes

Wikipedia in Action  London bombing, time lapse for Wikipedia changes  Emergent Information The Day Citizen Media Went Mainstream, July 11,

Wikipedia: Viewing History

Wiki Gardeners  Person who goes around tidying up the wiki, pruning, editing, organizing, and cleaning up  Usually liked and respected On a wiki, you might want to assign this role.

Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki

Ohio University Biz Wiki

University of Connecticut Staff Wiki

Butler WikiRef

Other Social Software Examples  Social Bookmark Tools –Furl - –Connotea - (aimed at academic, software is open source and you can install locally) –del.icio.us -  sharing, tagging and subscribing to other bookmarks  recommends other sites to you based on your profile  Flickr sharing and tagging photoswww.flckr.com  Technorati search blogs, or switch and search "tags"

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