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(A Note on) Wikis
Most folks are aware of wikis, if only because nearly every Internet search turns up a page from Wikipedia.Wikipedia, like all wikis, is a collaborative website that allows anyone with access to edit the content of the page(s). Both the content and organization of the website can be added to, deleted, or edited by the communityof users. This is called “open source editing.” Wikis invite collaboration and input probably better than anyother web tool we will discuss in the Public Humanities Toolbox. They are definitely Toolbox 2.0 in that youturn over control of the content entirely to your users.We have found, however, that setting up a wiki is more complicated than establishing a blog. There are someoptions that allow you to host your wiki on a third-party server; as with WordPress, these options are morelimited than ones you host on your own server space. More complicated wikis require you to set up a wiki onyour own server space. We like this Choice Wizardthat allows you to select which capabilities are important to you (and the level of technical expertise needed) and recommends which wiki applications are best for you.In this section we will briefly explain some of the opportunities afforded by wikis and point you in the rightdirection for learning more and setting up your own.
What can it do for you?
Wikis allow a passionate community to pool and document its knowledge. You could create a wiki about your community or local history. You could set up a few key pages and ask users to contribute what they know abouta particular site, event, or person. You could ask users to suggest other pages. You could set up page stubs,which means a short description of the topic is provided and you ask for more input from the community.Alternatively, you could set up a wiki about a particular topic, such as “Mills of Dartmouth County.” The wikicould feature an opening page about mills generally, separate pages for each known mill site, other pages aboutthe companies that ran the mills, still other sites about major events (strikes, closings, etc.) in each mill’shistory, etc. The possibilities, when you start thinking about how one idea leads to another, are limitlesslyexciting!Wikis may be particularly useful for organizations that are interested in better documenting and collecting morerecent history because pages can be edited by those with living memories of the topics in question.Wikis are hyperlinked, so it easy to reference among pages. These hyperlinks can take you to pages that explainterms further. This feature of wikis takes advantage of the internet’s unique characteristics.Perhaps our favorite aspect of wikis is that it is a forum for inviting the community to contribute to your knowledge. Using a wiki automatically communicates that you are open to sharing authority with the public,that you value their input, and that you understand that despite your best efforts, folks in the community willundoubtedly know more than what ever be stored in your collections. This capacity of wikis and other Web 2.0tools, we hope, build relationships and trust between and institution and its community.We can imagine several different wiki projects for the small cultural heritage organization, such as a localhistorical society:
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A wiki of local history where you set up the basic architecture of pages/topics and solicit the communityto contribute what it knows
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Asking your most knowledgeable and passionate volunteers to build a wiki, either of local history or a particular topic of interest.
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A partnership with local students, asking them to do research (in your collections) and write wiki entries.
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