wikis, content management systems, and community: enhancing publishing in libraries
DESCRIPTION
This presentation was given at the American Library Association's Library and Information Technology (LITA) forum in 2009. It shows what the Family History Library did to exponentially quicken our reference information publishing cycle, multiply content output, boost teamwork, morale, and community relations, and improve content design, quality and relevance by crowdsourcing our reference information publication process through a public wiki.TRANSCRIPT
Wikis, CMSs, & Community
Enhancing Publishing in Libraries
by Michael Ritchey (Twitter: mtritchey)
Today’s Lesson
• Overview of FamilySearch services
• Challenges & strengths in 2006
• Solution Concept & Requirements
• Quicken publishing cycle
• Multiply content output
• Boost teamwork, morale, community relations
• Improve content design, quality & relevance
Some Background on Our Perspective
1. Family History Library & Research Support
2. Research Support: 50 questions/day by phone & e-mail
3. 80% of questions answered by volunteers
4. Our volunteers & customers are senior citizens
5. 2006: Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
6. CRM model: customer’s question routed to an agent
7. 4500 family history centers worldwide
8. CRM model is not scalable to help family history center
volunteers
9. 2006: Knowledge Management System (KMS)
10. KMS closed to volunteers; obsolete content
Challenges
Challenge: Advise Genealogists Worldwide
Research advice on FamilySearch Internet, 2006
Challenge: cover more places
Challenge: cover more languages
Research advice on FamilySearch.org
about countries in their native language, 2006
Challenge: Update content faster
Research advice on FamilySearch.org revised 2001-2006.
Challenge: connect customers with experts
How do I find birth records
from Brazil?
(Yawn!) I wish I had
someone to help!
Sounds tough!
I dunno
Implement
old idea
Achieve
denial Fail
Our time-tested model
2006 Revelation:
Headquarters can’t
do it alone.
Is there a better way?
Our Strengths as an Organization
1. Expert staff
Our Strengths as an Organization
1. Expert staff
2. World-renowned
record collection
Our Strengths as an Organization
1. Expert staff
2. World-renowned
record collection
3. 60,000 volunteers
Challenges + Strengths = Community
1. Cover more places
2. Cover more languages
3. Update content faster
4. Connect customers with experts
1. Expert staff
2. World-renowned record collection
3. 60,000 volunteers
Challenges Strengths
Solution: Community!
Selling the concept: Wikipedia
Selling the concept: Wikipedia
1. 8th most popular Website
2. Content written by community
3. 3,000 new entries per day
4. Most errors corrected in 5 mins.
5. 11 edits per article
Requirements
Requirements
1. Open source
2. WYSIWYG authoring tool (yo mamma)
3. Article history/version control
4. Limit visibility of some articles
5. Volunteer authoring
6. Easy interlinking
7. Admin can lock down a page (Home page)
8. Notifications
9. System deployable by non-engineers!
Solutions
First solution: Plone CMS
FamilySearch Wiki: Plone site
Questions of concurrent authoring
scalability
2007 MediaWiki iteration
Quicken the
Publication Cycle
Challenge: Update content faster
Every revision required input from
• Director (approval)
• Publication strategist
• Usability specialist
• Technical writers
• Editors
• Correlation
• Software engineers
Update content faster on a wiki
• Get an idea
• Add it to the wiki
• Get input
• Iterate
Shortens the publishing
cycle…
…from months to
minutes.
Multiply Content
Output
Multiply Content Output
1. 800 19,000 docs since 2007
2. 82,000 edits in 2009 (as of 10/04/09)
3. Top contributors have 10k-16k edits ea.
4. 2009 edits = 719,000,000 characters
5. 6,900 characters/edit avg.
6. Top pages have 300-500 edits
7. Reference librarians writing 22,000 hours/year
Boost Teamwork,
Morale, Community
Relations
Teamwork, Morale, Community
1. Collaborative projects
2. Unfettered Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)
3. SMEs reach out for project help
4. Collaboration between community vols. & staff
5. Weekly user group/community meeting on Adobe
Connect
Improve Quality
&
Design
Quality
• Footnotes
• Bylines
• Change history
• Discussion pages
• Patrollers
• Moderators
• Watch lists & change notifications
• Members are Pit Bulls
• Community Meeting
Learnings
1. Relinquish control
2. Initiate projects with small teams; require 70%
consensus for redesign
3. Govern by social constraints, not system
constraints
4. Let community try any miscreants
5. Invest lots of time w/ community
6. Share success metrics to win support & resources
7. Empower, train & support volunteer project leaders
Today’s Challenges (Got advice?)
1. Not getting 25% of librarians’ time
2. Wiki mgrs. spread too thin to manage content dev
• Empower & train community as project mgrs.
• Experimenting w/ right mix of project mgmt. vs.
production
3. Democracy design paralysis. Limit re-work!
• Projects: Small team makes initial design; later design
changes require 70% consensus.
Conclusion: We are smarter than me!
1. The job is too big for Headquarters
2. Volunteer communities can do big jobs
3. Success = community collaboration
wiki.FamilySearch.org
Twitter: @mtritchey