Wikis, Virtual library conferences and unconferences

This week we are getting into the topic of Wikis.

The WA Unconference in August was a great example of how a group of like minded library people can be brought together via the medium of a wiki. The whole day was organised, topics chosen and discussed, lunch and tea planned through the Unconference Wiki. Then on the day we all gathered for a terrific "unconference" and the day went so smoothly.

I was reflecting at how much this had all changed from the days when we folk way over in Perth missed out on a lot of professional development activities, with the high cost of domestic flights. Even today the $1,000 fees of the major conferences are prohibitive for most of us. I came across a blog post from a librarian in Melbourne who was commenting on how Learning 2.0 is bringing people together to learn via Web 2.0 networks. It’s from the Infosleuth and sums up where we have come in the last 30 years in sharing experiences and gathering inspiration from others.

Jimmy Wales seminar

We attend the Jimmy Wales seminar Challenging How Knowledge is Created at the Burswood on Tuesday 24th April.

At the start of the seminar participants were invited to use the tag "eduausem2007", if they were blogging about the seminar. This tag will then ensure that everything about the seminar would be captured on flickr, technorati, or del.icio.us. It occurred to me that before embarking on ECU Library Learning 2.0, I would not have really understood what they were on about.

Jimmy Wales is the founder of online encyclopaedia Wikipedia. He believes firmly in the ‘democratisation’ of knowledge, and is taking the Wikipedia phenomenon around the globe. The Wikipedia movement is dedicated to addressing the digital divide by providing free access to a range of educational products. In addition to the encyclopedia they are now working towards open access online journals and books.

This was very pertinent to the whole Web2.0 area. Wikipedia sits firmly in the Web2.0 environment as it is not about software, but about learning and knowledge creation in a social environment.

Jimmy Wales sees us moving from the “gatekeeper model” to the “accountability model” This has impact on libraries which have traditionally had a type of gatekeeper role. We need to rethink this.

Jimmy answered some of the Wikipedia critics. In a recent nature article it was found that a Encyclopedia Britannica article on science had 3 mistakes and one in Wikipedia had 4 mistakes.

Mark Pescy’s presentation really got to the nitty gritty of the seminar topic on knowledge creation and “peer produced technologies”. He sees wiki knowledge creation as centred around truth, trust, and authority. Authority is distributed, and the wiki community has the knowledge. Truth comes with trust, for example trust that the source is reliable. I think this links well with information literacy where we teach students about the evaluation of information found on websites and elsewhere.

There was some discussion on implementing wikis in the workplace. For a wiki to succeed you only need a core of about 5 people who regularly contribute.
It was interesting to compare the functions of blogs and wikis and we felt that wikis would be really useful in the ECU Library context as we tend to work collaboratively anyway. Blogs tend to be a more individualistic form of communication.

A range of people attended the all day seminar, including teachers, people from media, librarians, educators from the TAFE and university areas.

The seminar was sponsored by a number of groups including ALIA, Education.au and EDNA. You can view some of the online forum that ensued at this EDNA spot

Take me to your Wiki

I found the resource What is a Wiki? Really useful and the diagram there illustrates exactly the difference between the often misuse of email and how a Library Wiki could be very helpful.

It’s from: The Wiki Way: Quick Collaboration on the Web

Wikis provide more of a level playing field. I see application internally in helping to get input from a cross section of staff, eg in getting ideas together re for example: new building refurbishment, new catalogue re-design, website redesign. It would depend on the subject and situation, of course. Some things obviously would need a face to face solution.

Wikis can also be useful as a way of providing subject guides for students and keeping them up to date. This would be worth trying. The St. Joseph County Public Library's Subject Guides are amazing . Very appealing and full of dynamic links that can be created easily without knowing HTML. Our guides are currently very traditional and print based. This approach would open them up more and provide additional features.

The MYECU Blackboard approach to collaborative wiki is one that can be explored further after this 23 Things program is finished.

BTW the :Wiki Sandbox" term I discovered is the name for the area on the wiki where you can play around. Makes sense!

Speaking of Wikis, I went to the Jimmy Wales seminar last week and will post on that separately. Jimmy is the founder of Wikipedia.