wikis for documentation

I recently asked the question on Twitter:

"Are any library systems teams using wikis as their main method of documenting their own systems?

I had quite a few responses from teams who are already using wikis as their main method of documenting their library systems. The most notable of these were Kent University, who have been using wikis for documentation sine 2003. So given that teams are contemplating or already using wikis, what are the advantages of this method of documentation over the existing method of saving text/word documents to a shared area?

Jeremy Wallace wrote an article just a little over a year ago entitled: Using Wikis for internal documentation. The opening paragraph to the article suggested that "Documenting your organizational procedures can be a big help, but this information often languishes in obscurity and goes slowly out of date."...sound familiar?

Here are some of the advantages of wiki use for documentation:

• Documents can be worked on in a collaborative manner.
• Documents can be edited from any location as they are web based rather than on a network share.
• Navigation can be very intuitive making documentation easier to follow and specific pages easier to find.
• Search functionality can be used in order to find particular documents or text.
• Documents are in fact web pages, which allows all the standard functionality of web pages such as linking, embedding, and scripting.
  
• Documents are presented in a standardised format rather than individuals personalising documents using their word processor.
• Versioning is standard so revision dates, the reviser, and what was revised are clearly visible. Reverting to an earlier version is also very simple.
• Authorisation is easy to maintain with multiple option for viewing and authoring documents.

What wikis are not, however, are the answer to all documentation prayers. Wikis, like most systems, are only effective if the time an effort is employed to ensure they fulfill expectation. The documentation hierarchy is an area that must be thought through carefully to ensure that the navigation structure is effective. Once a clear and intuitive structure is defined the documentation process should be very straight forward.

For more information about wikis in libraries read the librarywikis site.