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,

Technologies & Online Collaboration –Discussion forums – –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

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,

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

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 (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 PageContact UsSubjectsDatabases edit  Wiki pages look like web pages  Anyone with a web browser can read a wiki site

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

Creating New Pages Title … NewName … 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  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 entrythe Wikipedia entry  Movie Link of changes Movie Link

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  Seedwiki  XWiki  Hosted Wiki Feature Chart –

“Enterpise Blog” and “Enterprise Wiki”

WikisWeblogs  Unstructured  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 … –  Steven Cohen’s and Jenny Levine’s Internet Librarian presentations – 10/25/blogs_vs_wikis_presentation.htmlhttp:// 10/25/blogs_vs_wikis_presentation.html

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