Transcript PowerPoint Slides - University Library

Fostering Collaboration with
Wikis and Weblogs
Darlene Fichter
Data Library Coordinator, U of S Library
October 26, 2005
Overview
Collaboration
– Trends
Examples
– Weblogs
– Wikis
What to use when?
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
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) 35th
Anniversary celebrations, April 14, 1999 www.w3.org/1999/04/13-tlb.html
Technologies & Online Collaboration
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Discussion forums
Email
Instant messaging
Newsgroups
Webcasts
Web conferencing
Weblogs
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Team rooms
Instant messaging
Text messaging/wireless
RSS
Wiki
Expertise location
FOAF
Enterprise Collaboration Study
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/ambrozek_cothrel.html
Reality Check
Hard to quantify and measure the ROI for
online communities/collaboration
The requirements for creating and
maintaining communities is poorly understood
Trends: Customers
Continuing to expand in the use of
technologies
Different platforms and different functionality
Trends: Employees
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. 7th International Conference on Virtual Communities The Hague,
Netherlands. June 15, 2004 http://www.infonortics.com/vc/vc04/slides/cothrel.pdf
What is a Weblog?
Blog/ Weblog is
A web page containing brief entries arranged
chronologically
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
They have been called personal web
publishing communities*
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/personalWebPublishingCommunities
Weblog Usage
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
Knowledge-sharing (63%)
Internal communications (44%)
 Project management (30%)
 Personal knowledge management (23%)
 Event logging (23%)
 Team management (20%)
Blogging in the Enterprise: Executive Summary from the Guidewire Group
Market Cycle Survey - October 2005
Key Benefits
Improved internal communications (77%)
Replacement of other exiting work processes (41%)
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
Reference Desk weblogs
Learning Commons or IT Help Desk
blogs
Team or departmental blogs
Project or committee blogs
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 by it’s a fun way of communicating
asynchronously across the network”.
Wiki means “quick” in Hawaiian
Wikis Characteristics
Intended to be a simple to use as writing so
you can focus on the content, not the
mechanics and syntax
No HTML required
Wiki Pages
Home Page
edit
Contact Us
edit
Subjects
edit
Databases
edit
Wiki pages look like web pages
Anyone with a web browser can read a wiki site
Click, Type and Save
...Internet
Librarian 2005
edit
save
...Internet
Librarian 2005
edit
Creating New Pages
NewName
Title
… NewName …
edit
edit
Create a new page by writing its name with at leat
two upper case letters i.e. CamelCase
Click on any WikiName to see pages that link to it
Collaboration Applications
Discussions
Meeting notes and reports
Shared knowledge repository
Collaborative writing
Course based wikis
Communities
Wiki Examples: Wikipedia
Wikipedia: Recent Changes
Wikipedia: London Bombings
It shows the first 923 edits to the Wikipedia
entry
Movie Link of changes
Wikipedia: Viewing History
Wikipedia: Talk Page
Wiki Gardeners
Person who goes around tidying
up the wiki, pruning, editing,
organizing, and cleaning up
Usually liked and respected
WikiTravel
WikiFish: 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
pbWiki http://pbwiki.com/
Seedwiki http://www.seedwiki.com/
XWiki http://www.xwiki.com
Hosted Wiki Feature Chart
– http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wiki_Science:How_to_start_a_Wiki
“Enterpise Blog” and “Enterprise Wiki”
Number of Web Pages Containing a
Specific Phrase
1200000
1000000
800000
600000
400000
200000
0
2001
2002
2003
Years
2004
2005
Enterprise wiki
Enterprise blog
Wikis
Weblogs
Default is anyone edits
Default is by date,
reverse chronological
Anyone comments
Management is easier:
versions, rollback and
change long
Less familiar
New entries are shown
as “RSS”, edits not
usually tracked
More familiar
Unstructured
Want Both?
Commercial solutions
– Socialtext, Confluence
Free solutions: “blikis”
– Hosted, installed, plugins such as MoinMt for
Movable Type
Brainstorm: Library Collaboration
What is your purpose?
– Which tool?
More Information on Wikis and Blogs
My Furl Archive
– Wikis …
– http://www.furl.net/members/fichter
Steven Cohen’s and Jenny Levine’s Internet
Librarian presentations
– http://www.theshiftedlibrarian.com/archives/2005/
10/25/blogs_vs_wikis_presentation.html
Thank you
Questions?
Darlene Fichter
University of Saskatchewan Libraries
library.usask.ca/~fichter/