About This Wiki

 

On This Page

  1. Credits
  2. What is it?
  3. Security
  4. Development History
  5. Lessons Learned
  • Manager: Abby Lucy, circulation.ane@antioch.edu
  • Assistant Manager: Francie Yeager
  • Past Managers: Caleb John Clark: Creation and management from inception to Version 3.0. October 2005-June 2006; Emily Mason: Management from Version 3.1 to 4.2 (January 2008 to January 2010); Ken Klapper: Assistant Manager thrpugh June 2010
  • Staff editors and authors: Agir Akgul, Sarah Allen, Ashley Amsden, Abbie Bennis, Abby Clark, Alexis Clark, Mari Clemmer, Dan Cohen, Erika Cooper, Richard Curtis, Susan Danielson, James Erard, Lisa Ferensak, Martha Flower, Ross Garofalo, Francisco Gil-del-Real, Crystal Heide, Laura Hilborn, Joslyn Homberg, Matt Jardine, Ezekiel S. Jakub, Melanie Johnson, Ken Klapper, Sarah Kocz, Liz Lawler, Richard Leak, Don Long, Seth Long, Andrew Macblane, Tia Mahoney, Kristie Marks, Patricia Marshall, Emily Mason, Julia Mason, Matthew Morrissey, Gabrielle McWhorter, Robyn Oben, Corinna Photos, Mindy Pistacchio, Kathy Pixley, Amy Posner, Marnie Record, Erin Rodgers, Vicki Rubino, Kim Russo, David Steinberger, Selin Strait, Sarah Sullivan, Chastity Vangosen, Angie Viands, Maggie Vinson, Becky Wagner, Tom Wansleben, Joey Werner, Dan Weiser, Jesse Wheeler, Arin Willey, ChristiAne Wolski, Cathy Boswell, Sharon Brown, Cary Jardine, Marcy Leversee.
  • This Wiki is the training and knowledge management tool for the library's front desk at Antioch New England.
  • Only staff can edit this Wiki. Since this Wiki is primarily for Antioch NE Library Staff, only staff have the log-in information to edit it. It is made public for fast viewing by staff (no log-in each time you are looking for something while a Patron waits), easy access from anywhere, and in the spirit of sharing information and techniques. Feedback is welcome at circulation.ane@antioch.edu .

      

  • This Wiki is public on the Web. Never put personal or security-sensitive information here (i.e. codes, passwords, Patron or personal info, etc.) This includes information in screen shots. All sensitive information resides in the library in private places. 

This Wiki was initially created and managed to version 3.0 by Caleb John Clark, access services supervisor at the time. It was made by, and for, the front desk staff at Antioch University New England's library. It is also maintained and upgraded by the staff with the front desk supervisor coordinating and training.  The library's front desk is staffed by one full-time manager, 2-4 part-time staff, and 8-12 Work-Study students. It is open 7 days a week (88 hours) during classes and five days a week when school is not in session. The front desk also checks out and maintains all AV equipment at AUNE.

The Wiki was developed from October 2005 to June 2006 in three major “versions” explained chronologically below.

Note: Each major Wiki update will receive a new version number.

  1. Alpha. October 2005: A Wiki platform was researched. MediaWiki which powers Wikipedia, was the first choice and a version was installed by the supervisor on an old library Apple Macintosh G3 server in his office. MediaWiki was a wonderful prospect, but negotiations with AUNE’s IT and the Web Services department resulted in no support for the server. AUNE is very small and IT uses Windows and Cold Fusion to power all Web services so they do not have any staff with enough UNIX/Mac/PHP skills to support MediaWiki running in the building. Having only one person who knows how to keep a server going is never wise, so MediaWiki was scrapped as an option. The ideal Wiki given AUNE’s criteria, then, was found to be seedwiki.com. It is free, though at that level openly editable, meaning any viewer anywhere in the world who happens upon your Wiki can edit it. Editing required $110/mo, which was deemed reasonable for the future when we might need to “lock it down” for editing only by staff, and viewing by the world. Seedwiki also has a graphic user interface that looks like Microsoft (MS) Word to edit pages, a backup protocol that is easy to administer, and visitor statistics. For the library Wiki to be public meant that the work could easily be shared with other Antioch campuses, the industry, and other colleagues in the field without logging in. As they say, “information just wants to be free.”
  2. Beta. October 2005: The initial version of the AUNE library’s Wiki began as a "beta" site. To begin, information was loaded into the Wiki by copying text from an MS Word training manual and a home page with an alphabetized list of pages was started. Staff were assigned time to surf the beta and provide feedback that was incorporated as more and more MS Word training manual content was ported over by the supervisor.
  3. Version 1.0. November 2005 - January 2006: The site was developed for months at Seedwiki's free level. We did not experience any hacking or trouble. Next, it became part of work-study students’ job expectations to edit, add, learn, and re-edit pages. Pages grew past the original MS Word training manual’s content as more and more information was considered appropriate for the Wiki. Also, new work-study student employees were required to edit information that they find to be wrong or hard to use when they were using it to train. Thus each new trainee improved and updated the training material for the next trainee. A “page audit” was implemented and each staff member was assigned to roughly six pages on the Wiki to re-check links, content, typos and grammar, providing a complete check of the Wiki. By the end of Version 1.0 our Wiki was all text with no graphics, but the content was mostly complete, which signified version 1.0 to us. One research librarian started to successfully use the Seedwiki account for a research seminar and one professor began gathering online resources for a class using it.
  4. Training Sequence. February 2006: With the help of staff and trainees, a new page was made for trainees that consisted of a numerically prioritized sequence of their training. Until this point the Wiki had been mostly a knowledge database organized alphabetically. The first five new trainees were also the testers and editors of this training and lots of changes were made to the sequence of what to learn when. The result was that the first 10 or so steps needed to be learned in the first three shifts, while the remaining 30 or so steps could be completed over the first month of employment. The Wiki as a training tool was used and reinforced as a guide rather than as a replacement of person-to-person, hands-on training.
  5. Hacked! February 2006: Finally, the Wiki’s open edit permissions led to a hack. The library services supervisor noticed that “About this Wiki" had been changed to “About this gay Wiki.” Further inspection of all pages revealed a line added on one page that said “do you know I can edit these pages?” The supervisor requested the funding needed to secure the editing access. Upon approval, the Wiki transitioned to Seedwiki’s Blue Level which provided a single log-in account.
  6. Version 2.0. Graphics on every page. March 2006: Each staff member was given 30 days to create, compress and upload a relevant, or funny, graphic of their choice and re-check the pages’ content validity, grammar and usability. The supervisor wrote up a six page how-to on the protocol for doing this. A program called SnagIt was used for screen shots and a digital camera was used for still photos. All images and documents were stored on the server so that they would be available from multiple computers. Significant one on one time was spent by the supervisor to train staff in digital media production and the concept of compression and saving high resolution original media, so that images were compressed for the Web, but originals were archived in their uncompressed form for any possible use later. Two staff that had become naturally adept with the Wiki did more advanced page editing when things got dicey with the visual editor and the HTML code needed direct editing. The supervisor took care of the overall continuity and the most difficult bugs and problems.
  7. Ongoing Maintenance. April - May 2006: Staff questions were constantly referred back to the Wiki and the content was endlessly tweaked, debated and changed. Initially, management had to insist that staff use and update the Wiki for their informational needs. Over time, staff members began to express more interest, creativity and sense of accomplishment regarding their interaction with the Wiki. Each month, the supervisor surfed the Google search engine and used link-back software to see who was linking to the Wiki on the internet. He also posted the Wiki to four library email lists and the unique visitors per month went from the 300s to over 4000. More off-site links were added to the front page as well.
  8. Version 3.0. April-June 2006: Antioch New England Graduate School officially changed its name to Antioch University New England on July 1st. The Wiki’s name of “ANEWiki1” was changed to “Antioch University New England Library Training and Support Wiki” to reflect the name change, be more descriptive and to allow for improved searchability by Internet search engines. A single page was installed at the old Wiki’s URL that forwarded browsers to the new Wiki. Three work study students audited all 100+ pages for cross linking, image links, exterior links over 4 days. Visual improvements were made on all 100+ pages to improve navigation and content usability. Weeding was done to combine, extract or sub-categorize several pages to reduce the number of pages in the Wiki from about 120 to 100 to make it more manageable. A backup was downloaded and saved on our server in the unlikely event Seedwiki went out of business. One student was also assigned to spend more time in the Seedwiki’s discussion forums so we can be a member of the community and get help when we need it by giving help first. A Google audit was done, logging the number of returns for the search strings: "anewiki1" and ""Antioch University New England Library Training and Support Wiki.” There were about 20 links to the Wiki found on other sites. The new URL was entered into Wikipedia's "Wikinodes" and commented on in a Wiki article in Techsoup for more exposure.
  9. Version 3.1.  January - November 2008:  In an effort to revive the organization experienced during the "Caleb" years, the Wiki was proofed and a new version number was granted.  Emily Mason is the manager and Matt Jardine was the assistant manager (until August).
  10. Version 4.0.  November 2008 - June 2008: The wiki, now managed by Emily with assistant manager Ken Klapper, was completely proofed again by front desk staff.  Old or "ghost" pages were removed, and a new backup of the Wiki was saved locally.
  11. Version 4.1. July 2008 - October 2009:  The wiki had a major edit completed by Front Desk staff, supervised by Emily Mason and Ken Klapper.  A new backup was saved on the library server.
  12. Version 4.2. November 2009 - April 2010:  The wiki had a major edit completed by Front Desk staff, supervised by Emily Mason and Ken Klapper.  A new backup was saved on the library server.
  13. Version 5.0.  May 2010 - Present: Once again the wiki was edited rigorously by Front Desk staff, supervised by this time by Victoria Rubino and Ken Klapper.  AUNE Web Services manager Bonnie Powers also worked with Ken to develop the wiki Header and Footer files to add the links and images that were previously copied onto every wiki page.  Bonnie also created a new logo/image for the top of the page and helped rearrange the left sidebar.  The new look of the wiki warranted a new major version number.
  • The Wiki became part of a "Wiki philosophy." The synchronicity of the server, schedule, and Wiki all running on the same philosophy is symbiotic and self-reinforcing.
  • Keep it to two level navigation if possible. Keep every page listed on the front page and not more then a 100 pages or so. Restructure the pages on the front page to a numbered list for new trainees to have a clean idea of what they need to know, and in what priority. As the content evolves and changes you will be able to combine pages that are similar.
  • Maintain to Train. Staff editing of the Wiki allows for economical use of time as staff learn content of the page being edited and digital skills simultaneously.  Therefore, constant maintenance of the Wiki is also constant re-training of the staff.
  • Use it or Lose it. Using, editing and authoring the Wiki are not optional. It is part of the front desk staff's job duties. It is also in job descriptions, job-opening ads, and discussed in interviews before hiring. The supervisor must still champion it daily to keep it current, but it is worth the time.
  • Classic instructional design/software development protocols and Web usability conventions are important for the Wiki to be easy to use as it evolves and grows. We used a modified A.D.D.I.E. instructional design model (Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, Evaluate). The writing style is encouraged to be active voice, with as few words as possible about only basic skills. Staff are forced to have other staff test pages they work on for usability and typos.
  • The exposure on the Web helped our library, both on campus, in the Antioch five campus systems, and in the industry at large.
  • Work-study staff initially resisted learning about graphic production and uploading, but quickly started showing off their work once it was on the Wiki and volunteered to update more pages than assigned.
  • Having the Wiki hosted off-site by a company not involved with AUNE’s IT department was simple and freed up AUNE’s IT from yet another "unfunded mandate.”
  • Work-Study Assistant Managers naturally emerged in the form of students who liked editing the Wiki and had some technical proclivities. They were made “assistant Wiki managers” and given more responsibility.