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

– 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

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 isA web page containing brief entries arranged

chronologicallyCan 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 weblogsLearning Commons or IT Help Desk

blogsTeam or departmental blogsProject 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 Contact Us Subjects Databases

edit edit editedit

Wiki pages look like web pagesAnyone with a web browser can read a wiki site

Click, Type and Save

edit editsave

...Internet Librarian 2005

...Internet Librarian 2005

Creating New Pages

Title

… NewName …

edit edit

NewName

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

DiscussionsMeeting notes and reportsShared knowledge repositoryCollaborative writingCourse based wikisCommunities

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”

0

200000

400000

600000

800000

1000000

1200000

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005

Years

Number of Web Pages Containing a Specific Phrase

Enterprise wikiEnterprise blog

Wikis WeblogsUnstructured

Default is anyone edits

Management is easier: versions, rollback and change long

Less familiar

Default is by date, reverse chronological

Anyone comments

New entries are shown as “RSS”, edits not usually tracked

More familiar

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/