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Title:
Wikis: The Tools for Information Work and Collaboration
Review:
Wikis are in vogue, largely because of their usefulness. Unlike blogs,
which tend to be personal publishing tools, a wiki is driven by a
community, making it a natural fit for collaborative environments in
business, education and other fields. While much has been written
about the use of wiki software to create Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/, the online user-editable encyclopaedia,
there has still been very little written about the application of wiki
software to support Knowledge Management and sharing in smaller
communities.
"Wikis: Tools for Information Work and Collaboration", by Jane Klobas,
contributes to the small but growing body of literature documenting
the use of a wiki as a collaborative information space. The book is
pitched at '... people who want to find out about wikis and their
potential; for readers who want to know more about wikis as social
information spaces and information resources, and wikis in library and
information science, business and education'.
The early chapters introduce wiki software, its origins, design
principles and the open, community-oriented philosophy that is as much
part of the environment as is their ease of use. Also included is a
critical and balanced look at wiki sites as information sources,
including their strengths and weaknesses.
The middle section discusses the application of wikis in the library
community -- as an educational tool and in a business context. These
chapters are comprehensive, reviewing many different examples of
successful application of the technology.
Unfortunately, this comprehensiveness is also a weakness. Not enough
space is devoted to each example meaning that at times the text
becomes simply a list of project names, links and short explanatory
paragraphs. A few longer case studies reviewing what made each project
successful would have been more illuminating. Indeed some negative
examples also would have made for interesting reading.
The last chapters of the book, many of which were written by other
wiki experts, review the options available for creating a wiki. They
cover options for setting up a wiki environment and some issues to
consider when managing a wiki once it is up and running.
As a seasoned wiki user I found this last chapter to be the most
disappointing. While the author does review many important aspects of
a creating a successful wiki site, for example: providing a 'sandbox'
in which new users can experiment, seeding initial content, and
dealing with problem users and spam, some issues aren't covered well
enough. There is little discussion of the importance of 'wiki
gardening' to clean out old content, or wiki features such as page
merging to manage content.
The text is accessible and easy to read, providing copious pointers to
additional reading material and real-world examples of wiki usage.
Overall, the book provides a good introduction to using a wiki as an
information tool. For the reader already familiar with wiki
environments, looking for practical advice on how to improve or better
manage their wiki, then this book has little to offer. However, I
definitely recommend this book to readers who are new to the topic and
seeking a good introduction.
Free Pint Reviewer:
Leigh Dodds is the engineering manager for the IngentaConnect website,
a large aggregation of academic research content. Leigh is experienced
with developing with Java, XML and Semantic Web technologies and has
also contributed code and documentation to several open-source
projects. As a freelance author Leigh has also contributed articles
and tutorials to sites including IBM developerWorks and XML.com. Leigh
has presented papers at several technical conferences and has acted
as technical reviewer for a number of books covering core XML
technologies. He recently contributed to the O'Reilly book, XML Hacks.
His personal website is at http://www.ldodds.com/.
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