PRESENTER: Chad Boeninger Chad’s been talking about Wikis for two years but his intent today is to help us succeed in using Wikis for various purposes. He made a great case to use them for internal communication, collaboration vehicles for larger organizations and as a tool to communicate with library users. I was thinking of using a blog for internal communication but am rethinking it because the navigation and search tools are so much better. He strongly suggests to layout help guides and encourage use by being on hand when the questions are asked—drop everything and help.
Setting up a Wiki is very easy. So if your site administrator says otherwise suggest Media Wiki or even Wetpaint. But you’d probably have a better chance of moving ahead the project if you know why you are creating it and have your director on board with that.
Want to put it together? Choose right tool and use wikimatrix.com to help you figure out which to use. Chad likes to keep information on personal server because e feels safer.
Its easy to create but the tougher aspect is creating the structure. Especially if staff needs to update. They need to know why- what’s the purpose. Someone needs to set up organizational structure so it isn’t a blank page- inviting content helps people see the purpose.
Set up and get ideas or steal them! Wikiindex.org will show you other wikis to inspire. Might want to do before you choose the software.
Content: try adding old content and slapping it in to get started- then add.
Once you get enough information to get it going- let people know.
Provide help pages: how do use it, Beginning Wiki, Does this page exist, etc… set this up first!
Post content rather than sending to listserv
Let others add content: don’t get your feelings hurt- don’t demand perfection
Don’t worry about visual- this is content focus!
FORCE THEM TO ADD CONTENT Post something that will compel people to add content to make it
Provide even more help- offer the P2P help- drop what you are doing and help the. Don’t miss the moment.
Promote your wiki
Teach off Wiki in every class
Link to your wiki – could even use to update information faster THAN STATIC HTML PAGE
Link from subject guides
Add desirable content that people will use- know your users- what do they need?
Posts
2 comments:
There may be another avenue you can take to market with a Wiki. I found an interesting one called AboutUs.org.
All you have to do is search for your website and *bam* you have a page that you or anyone can edit.
It is really cool and worth checking out.
http://www.AboutUs.org
Might be a fun way to get started using Wiki's to Market.
Cool, thanks for sharing.
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