Social Software: Wikis

Darlene Fichter, Data Library Coordinator, U of S Library

November 28, 2005ACCOLEDS/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 Embedded “blog this” in the licensed database results like links to citation

manager

The University of Warwick: Statistics

http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk

Aggregate Tags for Your CommunityUniversity of Warwick Launch fall 2004

Blogs 3,622

Posts 47,872

Comments 110,784

Tags 4,654

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 Page Contact Us Products RFPs

edit edit editedit

Wiki pages look like web pagesAnyone 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 editsave

...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 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 Principleshttp://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiDesignPrinciples

Wiki (Jotspot) Anatomy: Features

Attach a File

Import Word

Emails

Send an Email

Make a comment

Inviteusers

Changesvia RSS

Search

Wiki Examples: Wikipedia

www.wikipedia.org

Wikipedia: Recent Changes

Wikipedia in Action

London bombing, time lapse for Wikipedia changesEmergent Information

The Day Citizen Media Went Mainstream, July 11, 2005 http://thelastminute.typepad.com/blog/2005/07/the_day_citizen.html

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

http://www.libsuccess.org

Ohio University Biz Wiki

http://www.library.ohiou.edu/subjects/bizwiki/index.php/Main_Page

University of Connecticut Staff Wiki

http://wiki.lib.uconn.edu/wiki/Main_Page

Butler WikiRef

http://www.seedwiki.com/wiki/butler_wikiref/

Other Social Software Examples

Social Bookmark Tools– Furl - www.furl.net– Connotea - www.connotea.org (aimed at academic,

software is open source and you can install locally)– del.icio.us - www.del.icio.us

sharing, tagging and subscribing to other bookmarksrecommends other sites to you based on your profile

Flickr - www.flckr.com - sharing and tagging photosTechnorati - www.technorati.com - search blogs, or

switch and search "tags"

Thank you

Questions?

Darlene Fichter University of Saskatchewan Libraries

library.usask.ca/~fichter/