Wiki-mania

Because the grant was structured in a way that we would be able to hire some students to work part time on the project, we needed to find a way to share information among the various Project Cataloging Assistants that would allow for a variety of work schedules.  One good way of addressing it seemed to be the establishment of a project wiki in which anyone involved in the project could share news or announcements affecting the project or the Project Cataloging Assistants.  It also would provide a space to ask questions about the project workflow, cataloging rules and application, and subject analysis–and allow the answers to be visible not only to all the current cataloging assistants, but any future assistants joining the project staff at a later date.  The wiki was started in early March, with a space for announcements, staff information and job descriptions, online resources to assist in cataloging, information about bibliographies, dictionaries, and other useful printed tools in the department.  After a month, I’m finding the wiki to be a bit of a challenge in terms of the Q&A page.  Essentially, questions are just added to the end of the page, so the organization is more chronological than topical.  The challenge to topical organization, however, is what to do with those questions that may be about more than one thing — a question may address cataloging rules AND subject analysis AND also touch on project workflow.  For now, the Q&A entries continue to simply be in chronological order.  Fortunately there is a search function in the wiki, so it is possible to search entries by key words.