wikis, content management systems, and community: enhancing publishing in libraries

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