Set­ting Up a Tool for Knowl­edge Shar­ing in a Pub­lic Library
Decem­ber 2, 2008

works on knowl­edge man­age­ment at the Pub­lic Library of Vlissin­gen in the Nether­lands
the Library also pro­vide ser­vice for the local hos­pi­tal and have opened ser­vices in ele­men­tary schools
they want to be a two-way library where their users are, adapted to the needs and wishes of their users
dig­i­tal library is becom­ing more impor­tant because fewer peo­ple are com­ing in for books

have to share knowl­edge effi­ciently, mak­ing use of hid­den staff tal­ent
did a “knowl­edge scan“
found that the intranet wasn’t meet­ing staff needs
their wiki is inter­nal only because they want to excel inter­nally before they might open it up for users

six steps to imple­ment­ing a wiki
1 — plan­ning the wiki
actu­ally the most impor­tant phase of all
many impor­tant ques­tions need to be answered, includ­ing is your inter­nal cul­ture ready for some­thing like this
are peo­ple stim­u­lated to share their knowl­edge or are they pre­vented from shar­ing it?
what do you want to get out of it?
which users do you want to con­tribute to it? what will the scope be?
they decided to involve all of their users because shar­ing knowl­edge is impor­tant to every­one
early involve­ment of future users is impor­tant — involve them as soon as pos­si­ble
also gets you feed­back
use wikitmatrix.org to find appro­pri­ate soft­ware for your project
decide hosted vs on your own server
they started out on their own server but went to a hosted ser­vice when they real­ized they didn’t have the in-house tech­ni­cal knowl­edge they needed

2 — design­ing the wiki
used an exter­nal visual designer to make the wiki use their cur­rent brand (he hap­pened to be the son of a staff mem­ber)
cre­ated the ini­tial struc­ture of the wiki but let it grow organ­i­cally
seeded it with ini­tial con­tent (no “empty box”)
cre­ated doc­u­men­ta­tion and pol­icy rules for the wiki (“wik­i­quette”) but don’t focus on the rules
cre­ated a sand­box area where peo­ple could exper­i­ment and play with­out feel­ing like they could mess things up

3 — Test­ing the wiki
used early adopters who were already famil­iar with wikis
test basic func­tions, proof­read­ing ini­tial con­tent, test links and wiki usabil­ity
let future users test the wiki

4 — Launch­ing the wiki and train­ing users
found it impor­tant to do this offi­cially so need to com­mu­ni­cate it to every­one in an offi­cial way
have lots of “com­mu­ni­ca­tion moments“
tell peo­ple what the wiki can do for them and inte­grate it into daily work prac­tices
pay more atten­tion to “slow adopters“
cre­ate a good handbook

5 — Man­ag­ing & main­tain­ing the wiki
appointed a “wiki gar­dener” to be respon­si­ble for mod­er­at­ing dis­cus­sions, review­ing con­tent, review­ing wiki struc­ture to makke con­tent eas­ily acces­si­ble by every­one
impor­tant dis­tinc­tion that she has no effect on actual con­tent — she isn’t a “wiki dic­ta­tor“
tech­ni­cal sup­port is main­tained by the host­ing com­pany in their case

6 — Wiki eval­u­a­tion
they’re in this stage now
using sta­tis­tics and user surveys

showed a screen­shot — it’s sim­ple because it’s focused on the con­tent
“teams & clus­ters“
“information”

they are now devel­op­ing new soft­ware that will com­ple­ment the wiki by han­dling ref­er­ence inquiries from the pub­lic
answer­ing ques­tions will become based on team exper­tise, not indi­vid­u­als
this is a rev­o­lu­tion­ary new way of work­ing in a Dutch pub­lic library
they will see the first demo of the sys­tem next week, so just in the ini­tial phase

wiki lessons learned (prac­ti­cal tips)
– the suc­cess of a wiki depends on user con­tri­bu­tion and enthu­si­asm
– involve your end-users from the begin­ning
– reward peo­ple for con­tribut­ing to the wiki, acknowl­edge experts who share
– a wiki com­ple­ments, but does not replace, face-to-face shar­ing; it’s not about the tech­nol­ogy or the tool, but the peo­ple
– seed the wiki
– inte­grate the wiki in daily work­ing practices

q: which soft­ware did you use?
a: moin moin was their first choice, but installing and con­fig­ur­ing it required more tech­ni­cal skills than they had, so they moved to Plone; users don’t need any tech­ni­cal knowledge

q: was the goal to replace or com­ple­ment the intranet? and can you give exam­ples of mak­ing the wiki prac­ti­cal for staff when explain­ing it?
a: the Library has dif­fer­ent geo­graph­i­cal loca­tions, so it can be dif­fi­cult for teams to meet phys­i­cally, so they are also imple­ment­ing a chat func­tion within the wiki