Wikis for Libraries

Citation

Crofts, S. (2011), "Wikis for Libraries", Program: electronic library and information systems, Vol. 45 No. 1, pp. 123-124. https://doi.org/10.1108/00330331111107466

This is one of a new series of titles, The Tech Set, first published by Neal‐Schuman in the United States of America, providing guides to use of emerging technologies in libraries. The author, Lauren Pressley, is the Instructional Design Librarian at Wake Forest University in Winston‐Salem, North Carolina. A quick Google shows that she has a presence in Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Zotero and many other Web 2.0 tools as well as on her own blog so she is well informed on this topic.

Wikis for Libraries is a quick read at just over 90 pages, excluding the index and bibliography, and is aimed at those working in libraries that would like to develop a wiki quickly and without needing much technical knowledge. The author takes the reader on a journey from an outline of what a wiki is, moving through the design stages to implementation and marketing of a wikis, taking in elements of best practice and finishing with suggestions on how to analyse the success of the wiki.

The book gives a good basic outline of wikis but occasionally throws in terms, without explanation, which may be unknown to a reader at the level this book is aimed at, for example, “you would need to create a MySQL database”. There is much good advice which could be applied to any project, for example, decide how you will set up the wiki before you start and have your users in mind when considering the aims of the wiki.

Most of us will be familiar with the most famous wiki of all, Wikipedia, and Lauren Pressley uses this as a focus when discussing editing content and outlines the principles which Wikipedia applies in relation to users' contributions. It is often the case that academic and library staff in universities warn their students against Wikipedia, but Pressley makes the valid suggestion that, “If your users turn to Wikipedia first, after all, why not put your content there?”

The section on implementation suggests a variety of uses for wikis including use as a knowledge base, as a means of collaboration, for project management as well as a straight web page. Using wikis as a way to share knowledge and answers to frequently asked questions is particularly useful in universities where staff at enquiry and help desks can share expertise and solutions to recurring problems. Using a wiki to run a web site may allow a wider pool of contributors since a wiki is likely to be easier to edit than a traditional web site. However, the author notes that it would be possible for an institution to customise the appearance of a wiki to conform to corporate styles and colours, given staff with knowledge of CSS (cascading style sheets).

One decision to be made is whether to host the wiki locally or on a vendor's site. Although the author mentions that there may be problems with transferring content from one host to another at some point in the future, she does not cover the problem of sustainability of a hosted web site in much detail, except in a short section near the end relating to keeping software up to date. This is an important aspect to consider and something to be considered at the setting up stage of any long‐term wiki project.

The book has a companion wiki with a podcast at http://techset.wetpaint.com/ which includes some extra content, but not links to the many wikis and web sites referred to in the book. Facet has published a range of interesting titles on Web 2.0 and libraries, which mostly deal with wikis as one of a range of applications, for example Phil Bradley's very readable book on Web 2.0 applications for libraries (Bradley, 2007). Many other titles about creating wikis are more IT focused, requiring a certain amount of expert knowledge, so this will be a helpful “how to” guide for anyone thinking about setting up a new wiki for their institution.