Welcome to the very first blog post from thewikiman. The point of this blog is initially to chart the process of trying to get a Wiki off the ground in Higher Education. It may also take in other Information Professional stuff: events, technologies, interesting things others have said, and also maybe just whatever else takes my fancy... you have been warned.
A big thank you to joeyanne for giving me the impetus to start a blog (after I saw her presentation at the CILIP New Professionals Conference; more on that in a later post, probably) and some top technical advice too!
:: the wiki ::
I work in the field of digitisation - specifically, digitising key texts for students under the CLA Scanning & Photocopying Licence. For various reasons which I'll document in future posts, I've come to the conclusion that the Higher Education digitisation community needs a single, updatable resource where people can share best practice. The obvious medium for this is a Wiki.
But getting a wiki off the ground isn't as simple as you might think... (Unlike getting a website and blog off the ground, for example; this time yesterday I was still several hours away from registering the domain name www.thewikiman.org and now here I am writing the first blog post, and it's all been incredibly easy.) There's a whole lot of issues to work through, decisions to make, and people to get onside.
This blog will document the process, hopefully provide anyone else planning on creating a serious wiki some insight into the issues and, possibly, give them a head-start on their research into different wiki softwares, hostings etc. And the blog will also add to the canon of modern Information Professionals blogging about what it's really like to work in a library these days.
A blog about a wiki, eh? I should just get 2.0 wannabe stamped on my forehead...
- thewikiman