Speaking of Just Doing It –Wikis

I was reading about the new LISWiki and the Shifted Librarian’s post about Best Practices for Wikis, and was reminded how much of a debate we had on the NEASIST program committee about the whys and what fors of using a wiki for our May program. We decided against it and went for blogs instead. The Events blog will get more use as time goes on, but our program committee blog is just, well, lying there. I think that’s mostly my fault, emailing is still very much in my bloodstream. We have some exciting program ideas in the works, some of them long range, so perhaps, we’ll revisit the wiki. At the very least, it will give the people unfamiliar with wikis some practice (unfamiliarity was a barrier during our program planning). The student chapter of ASIST in my region is of the “just do it” mind and have created a collaborative wikispace using jotspot.

My RI databases working group has a jotspot wiki and we’ve really found it useful as both an archival (all communications, documents, and email) record and deliverable of the work we’ve done over the last few months. You have to be willing to dabble, and more importantly, if it doesn’t work, don’t be afraid to break-up with a technology that’s not working for you. Michael Stephens calls it “Techno-Divorce”. I’d point you to Stephens’ article in LJ online, but you now have to be a subscriber to read it. Good Librarian Beatrice that I am, here’s the citation: Michael Stephens, “Technoplans VS. Technolust” Library Journal, November 1, 2004. [Edit 7/15/05: Apparently the new for-pay feature was a mistake and LJ's going back to free, so I've put the link in to the Stephens article. Nice.]

1 Comment

1. Removing Yourself from the Online Conversation

   Last month, I wrote about the positive shift I’ve seen at OCLC and how they’re looking outwards in order to become part of the bigger online world. I’ve been hesitant to post about an opposite case, in part out of…

   Trackback by The Shifted Librarian — 07.12.05 @ 9:51 pm

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