Interoperability Focus: EventsMarieke Guy gave a presentation on Wiki or Won't He? The highs and lows of establishing a public sector wiki at the Internet Librarian International 2006 Conference held at the Copthorne Tara Hotel, London, Monday 16th - Tuesday 17th October 2006.
The presentation was be part of Session A103 - Wikis and Social Software in Track A: Web 2.0 and Library 2.0.
Wikis are user-alterable Web sites that work especially well as collaboratively created reference sites. Their popularity has really taken off in the last few years with the creation of Wikipedia, Wikitravel and more recently Ganfyd, a medical wiki.
Never more than a sensible slice behind the cutting edge the public sector follows and this year has been the rise of the library and academic wiki. Setting up a wiki might be seen as a 'cheap and cheerful' way to get people talking and eventually arrive at consensus but nothing worthwhile ever came easy.
This presentation looks in more detail at a number of public-sector wikis, notably the Interoperability Focus Community Wiki. It considers the reasons for the establishment and use of a wiki, how working practices were decided upon and the processes by which the end result was arrived at. It also looks at many of the common issues that arise including choice of wiki software, agreement upon a licence, the importance of involving your community and how to stop your wiki becoming an unmaintained storehouse of out-of-date information. This presentation concludes that despite technology concerns the real problems remain the human ones; and a good wiki always equals a committed community.
URLs for the session are linked to from del.icio.us:
http://del.icio.us/tag/ili2006wiki
[UKOLN] [Interoperability Focus]
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Marieke Guy of UKOLN.
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10 November 2006
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