#5 Library Success

"Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki," is a public access wiki designed to be a "one-stop shop for great ideas and information for all types of librarians." It is a wiki for librarians, by librarians, (but others with helpful info related to libraries are welcome to contribute, too). All you have to do is supply your e-mail address so you're a registered user, and you can edit away on library topics. The site was created by Meredith Farkas, who is a librarian, writer, teacher, Head of Instructional Initiatives at Norwich University in Vermont, and somewhat of a library world celebrity. She runs the popular librarian blog, "Information Wants to be Free," or "IWTBF," and authored the book Social Software in Libraries: Building Collaboration, Communication and Community Online, published in 2007. In March of 2006, she was named a "Mover and Shaker" by Library Journal, in part due to her creation of this wiki. In her own words, obtained from her Library Success User Profile, Farkas says she intends the wiki to be a "collaborative space for librarians to share success stories and inspire each other to do great things in our own libraries."

Created in 2005, Library Success is hosted by MediaWiki, the same folks that host Wikipedia, so you'll find the interface looks very familiar. I thought this wiki was organized very well. There is a sidebar of contents on the main page which contains categories such as Programming, Readers' Advisory, Services to Specific Groups and Technology, among others. When you click on one of these, you are directed to a list of sub-categories. Click on one of these and you'll find entries on topics including definitions, histories, advice, and a wide number of links to other helpful resources. There's also a search box to find entries, just like in Wikipedia.

I love this website. I think it's a great use of a wiki and also a great example of librarians doing what librarians do best: sharing information. I used Library Success earlier in the semester when I was looking for information on Street Lit Bestsellers. In Library Success I found a definition, alternate terms, an update on the popularity status of Street Lit, and links to several great resources such as prominent Street Lit Publishers, Book Lists, and Articles.

Thankfully, there's a lot of librarians excited about sharing their informtation with this wiki, which is what makes the site a success. It's important to keep in mind that when it comes to public wikis, wikis designed to get the "sum of knowledge" of a group, the strength is in the numbers. What happens if you don't have a lot of folks contributing? Well, compare and contrast Library Success with LIS Wiki, http://liswiki.org/wiki/Main_Page.

It appears this wiki was created around the same time as Library Success, summer 2005, but it has come to a very different fate than that of Library Success. LIS Wiki is, unfortunately, a failure. To begin with, when you come to the Main Page, there's absolutely nothing on it. Doesn't look very hopeful. When you click on the Browse Categories button, you find the categories listed are surprisingly sparse. The articles are even more disappointing. Most of them are listed as "stubs," the MediaWiki definition for an article that's not fully developed, and ask for your help to expand the article. On each page there is link to go to a Wikipedia article by the same name. Curious, I looked up "information literacy" in the LIS Wiki. This article was about a paragraph long. The Wikipedia article, however, was about 15 times as long. I'll be sticking with Library Success or even Wikipedia when I have LIS questions, sorry LIS Wiki.

So where did the LIS Wiki go wrong? Well, they simply didn't have enough people contributing. This can be a common problem for people trying to start up a new wiki they have big dreams for. Somewhat of a wiki guru, Meredith Farkas gets asked, "How can I get people to use my wiki?" all the time. So much so that she put it as a question on her blog's FAQ page: http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/looking-for-me/merediths-faq/ . Her advice? To increase your chances for a successful wiki, first, she says, you need to "seed your wiki." This means creating a basic structure and adding some pages with a little content. She says no one wants to contribute to a wiki with no content, because, "why waste your time with a project that no one else thought was worth contributing to?"

Additionally, she says, "documentation is critical." You need to supply your wiki with implicit instructions: "tell your community what a wiki is, what the purpose of this wiki is, and how they can edit the wiki." The LIS Wiki Main Page is totally blank, leaving potential contributors in the dark. On the other hand, the Library Success Main Page has great documentation, informing folks exactly how to start editing, what sorts of things to contribute, and inspiring them to be part of an exciting wiki. The result? Success!

References
http://www.libsuccess.org/

http://www.libsuccess.org/index.php?title=User:Meredith

http://liswiki.org/wiki/Main_Page

http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/looking-for-me/merediths-faq/