Once configured or installed, a wiki is edited by a simple set of commands in a Web interface that is strikingly similar to that of a blog; however, wikis employ different tag commands. Mediawiki, for example, an open-source software option, uses straight brackets to create hyperlinks and other pages (see figure 18).

Jessamyn West, Biblioblogger at Librarian.net, has authored a page of wiki editing tips at the LibSucess Wiki, a collection of library best practices and more. West offers up these tips for building pages and general wiki participation. Although specific to Mediawiki installations, these hints are most useful for understanding wiki culture.

• Register—Registering lets people know who edited a page and allows all of your edits to be grouped under your name. This helps you establish a reputation—this is important on big wikis like Wikipedia, perhaps not as much here—and lends authority to your entries and edits. If you are registered, people can contact you through your talk page if they have questions about your entries or edits.
• Annotate—You have the option of adding little notes to your edits in the Summary box beneath the editing page. If you are including a fact that is not widely known, sometimes a brief cite is helpful here. Check the minor edit box if you are just fixing a typo or a punctuation error.
• Discuss—Every page on the wiki has a discussion page that you can use for discussing an article. This is often more useful than making an edit, having someone else undo it, and back and forth. These pages can be for asking questions about the topic, or informal coverage of a topic.
• Link—Please feel free to add hyperlinks and crosslinks to other wiki pages.
• Look—The best way to learn how to format things on the wiki is to look at how people have formatted things on other pages. Just hit “edit” at the top of the page to see how people did what they did.²

What can libraries and librarians do with wikis? From the various articles, blog posts, and Webinars of late, we can see there are many uses for wiki software in libraries.

• Subject guides
• Project planning
• Policy manuals
• Resource listings
• Training resources

Librarians may find a wiki useful for just about any Web-based project!

Ward Cunningham shares his design principles at his Web site. It's fascinating to apply these principles to Web 2.0 thinking as well.

• Open—Should a page be found to be incomplete or poorly organized, any reader can edit it as they see fit.
• Incremental—Pages can cite other pages, including pages that have not been written yet.
• Organic—The structure and text content of the site are open to editing and evolution.
• Mundane—A small number of (irregular) text conventions will provide access to the most useful page markup.
• Universal—The mechanisms of editing and organizing are the same as those of writing so that any writer is automatically an editor and organizer.
• Observable—Activity within the site can be watched and reviewed by any other visitor to the site.³

Wiki Editing Tips, Library Success Wiki www.libsuccess.org/index.php?title=Tips_page

Ward Cunningham's Wiki Design Principles http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiDesignPrinciples

The New Services group at Bethlehem Public Library in Delmar, New York, recently created a wiki to keep track of links to online resources, according to Geoffrey Kirkpatrick, head of circulation and technical services. “We were trying to do this by group e-mail but found that we were just ‘gunking up’ each other's inboxes.” Now members of the team can view the wiki for new posts at their convenience.”

Steve Backs, who uses an internal blog at Monroe County Public Library, also has gotten into wikis. “I wanted to start a pilot project that would carry over to the library's intranet, which it has. Since then, committees have started using wikis to communicate and share information,” Backs explained.

I've also learned, through this wiki and some other wiki experiences, that a successful wiki relies on the COLLABORATION of many people. If, for whatever reason, people don't start contributing to the wiki, then it's all but dead—a tool with great untapped potential. For a wiki to work, it requires active participation by many people, building a resource that participants and observers view as having value and being worthwhile.

Scott Pfitzinger, Creator of the Butler WikiRef, www.seedwiki.com/wiki/butler_wikiref

One of the first library wikis was the Butler WikiRef, created by the librarians at Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana (see figure 19). The front page of the wiki describes the resource and invites participation:

WikiRef is a collaborative review of databases, books, websites, etc., that are part of the collection of Reference Resources available at or via the Butler University Libraries. It functions like a Reference User's Group that facilitates discussion between and the empowering of reference users.

Butler librarians, faculty, staff, and students are welcome to add their comments about any reference resource we provide, including how useful you find it and what classes it may apply to. Please only delete or change text if it is factually incorrect or unprofessional in deportment. You are also welcome to add additional reference resources that you have used at Butler.⁴

Butler reference-team librarian Scott Pfitzinger created the wiki in early 2005, and I asked him about the benefits and pitfalls of the project recently. “The best thing about the wiki I've implemented is its potential,” he told me. “While it hasn't exploded yet, there is a lot of potential for a quality collaborative site. The primary purpose of the Butler WikiRef is collaborative discussions and feedback on our reference resources, both print and online. There has only been a little of that so far.”

This is just a sampling of wikis created by librarians:

• BizWiki: Librarian Chad Boeninger's business resource wiki at Ohio University Library, www.library.ohiou.edu/subjects/bizwiki/index.php/Main_Page;
• LibSuccess Wiki: Collection of best practices and information for library services and projects, www.libsuccess.org;
• LISWiki: A collective wiki for articles and information about the field, www.liswiki.com;
• Library Instruction Wiki: Clearinghouse of training materials and tips developed by the Oregon Library Association's Library Instruction Roundtable, http://instructionwiki.org;
• Library 2.0 Wiki: Resource for Library Camp, held at Ann Arbor District Library in April 2006, and more, http://wiki.library2.net; and
• SJCPL Subject Guides: Subject Guides at the St. Joseph County Public Library on topics of interest to library users, www.libraryforlife.org/subjectguides/index.php/Main_Page.

It is important to have specific goals and objectives you want to achieve with the wiki. Your library staff will need to ask the question, “What is the goal of this wiki?” Other questions you and your fellow staff members may ask: “Do we want to build a resource with a working group of librarians?” and “Do we want an entire department to edit a policy or procedural manual?” A wiki may be the perfect solution for group-oriented work. Plan the goals and mission of the wiki just as discussed in the blog chapter in this issue.

After determining the reason for starting the wiki, the next step will be to decide who the wiki authors will be. Who will collaborate on the wiki? Will it be select staff? Everyone? An entire department? Wiki software includes the functionality to set author logins and passwords, so configure as you would like—or open it up to everyone on your library's staff. If you are building a community resource, open it to all users and staff members, and watch what happens! See the Ann Arbor wiki for more at http://arborwiki.org/city/Main_Page.

Appoint a wiki monitor. Even if the resource is open to all, appoint a person to monitor changes and watch for wiki flames and wiki spam.

Take time to train staff members how to use the idiosyncratic software conventions of wikis. Again, give your fellow staff members a chance to learn the commands and then play with the wiki. At SJCPL, the best training scenarios played out as one-on-one sessions, during which librarians learned how to create and edit their own personal pages. That learning translated to the creation of the SJCPL Subject Guides, and many of the librarians went on to offer even more peer-to-peer experiential training.

Promote your resource, plain and simple. Do not build a great resource and then not tell anyone! Announce it on the library blog! Issue a press release. Print up an informative bookmark or sticker. Ask to speak at campus or community meetings and talk about the wiki. Librarian Scott Pfitzinger commented on the Butler WikiRef and promotion: “I've learned that a great deal of marketing/publicity is necessary to implement a new technological tool in an environment that is unfamiliar with it. That will be one of my projects for this summer—outlining a plan of communication, letting students and faculty know about this resource in as many ways and methods as possible.”