In earlier postings, I've suggested a few ways in which wikis can be used in libraries and academic institutions. I'd like to explore this further, in this entry focusing on student/librarian Web site collaborations.

One of the popular misconceptions about wikis is that they are always open to editing by anyone, either anonymously (formerly available on Wikipedia) or after establishing an account (currently available on Wikipedia). I'm guessing that the dominance of the Wikipedia models plays a role in forming this misconception. In fact, full-featured wiki software offers many ways to control user rights. MediaWiki, for example, offers LDAP authentication. It can also be configured so that only administrators (called "sysops") can create new accounts. So open editing need not be an issue.

The potential for wikis in academic libraries is the opportunity for online collaborative authorship with version control on the edits.

The notion of collective intelligence in regards to wiki publishing has generated a lot of comments recently, especially based on the Wikipedia experience. There are valid criticisms to be made (an especially interesting and wide-ranging piece was written by Jaron Lanier), but I suggest that they are not particularly relevant to the student experience. I've just been reading an interesting piece from the November 2006 Educause Learning Initiative about the USC Confluence project (PDF format), which utilizes wiki technology in a number of innovative ways. Some of these initiatives don't even involve collaboration, but rather use the wiki as a content management system for individual work.

There is a number of reasons why librarians should consider fostering wiki-based Web site collaboration with students. For one thing, outside of internships, students don't have opportunities to do "professional" work. Most of their output remains private, and has little consequence beyond the course grade. I suggest that the bar would be raised, along with personal satisfaction, if students helped librarians maintain the library's Web site. I've already suggested this, and here I'm taking it further by stating that we need student help in this way.

I don't think we can do it alone. Or, put another way, we could do it better if students helped out. For example, consider the potential benefits of student contributions to various help pages on our sites. Academic libraries are complex institutions. Let's give students the opportunity to help their peers navigate our buildings, use our technology, find resources and patronize our services. The collective intelligence of students in these areas could be enormously useful.

I've often heard complaints from librarians that they don't have sufficient time to update their Web pages. I'm sympathetic. I'm also unhappy to see library Web sites that are out of date. This is where student help - over and above the occasional pages that we sometimes let them do - could make a real difference. I've seen bibliographer subject pages that are updated no more than a few times a year. How useful could they be? In the meantime, students are cruising the Web, engaged in resource discovery. Let's see what they've got. If you want to limit their work to wiki pages that are separate from the pages you maintain, go ahead. But give the idea a chance.

Imagine preserving all this collective intelligence over the years. This material would contribute to the cultural memory of the institution. This is one of the UThink rationales in the context of blogging, and it has always resonated with me.

The inevitable question arises, What if the collective intelligence of students falls short of the mark? Remember that wiki technology allows for a rollback to earlier versions. This could be accomplished by other students or by library faculty. E-mail notification of recent changes can be configured to help librarians track what's going on. Further, I would argue that some content on our sites also falls short because it is static, not always updated, and doesn't always reflect the range of student experience.

We've set a pretty high bar on our Web sites. The collective intelligence of students might set it higher.