Example of wiki as an internal managment tool: The Archives Service Center at the University of Pittsburgh

This article was originally published in the July 2009 SAA Archives Management Roundtable newsletter, available at: http://www.archivists.org/saagroups/archmgmt/Jul09.pdf. I’m sure there are other archives doing similar things, but I think this implementation provides a useful example of how wiki software can help with internal coordination in addition to being a tool for outreach.

ASC IMPLEMENTS WIKI AS MANAGEMENT TOOL
Ed Galloway, Head – Archives Service Center, University Library System, University of Pittsburgh

The Archives Service Center (ASC) at the University of Pittsburgh Library System implemented a wiki hosted by PBworks to better track and manage projects within the department. The ASC consists of five full-time archivists, two part-time archivists, two support staff and many part-time student assistants. Rather than relying on a whiteboard, email exchanges, or trail of Word documents, we needed a better way to know what projects are in the pipeline, their status and completion dates. Our wiki allows everyone in the department to read and update pages, including students, but it is not publicly accessible since it contains information on unprocessed collections and is designed to be used as an internal management tool.

Our wiki is divided into five sections. The Finding Aids section tracks what collection guides are in the process of being created, if they have been reviewed and by whom, if they are ready to be encoded, if they are encoded and ready to be mounted online, and if our ASC News page needs to be updated to announce the release of new research collections. This section also
includes a workflow for creating a finding aid and moving it through the appropriate steps to completion, including EAD mark-up.

The Collections section contains an inventory of unprocessed collections. While we are moving to implement Archivists’ Toolkit later this year, in the meantime this inventory has provided us with a snapshot of collection descriptions and processing tasks. Students conducted this inventory and entered the data in a template in the wiki. As a result of the inventory and storing the data on the wiki, the collection information is now accessible to everyone in the department. Previously, this information existed in three different places.

The third section of the wiki comprises Student Projects where anyone can share project ideas for undergraduate student interns (History majors) and graduate library school students. The ASC frequently employs 10-12 students per year who work on a variety of processing and other projects. We need to always be generating project ideas and needs.

The Use of Collections section is designed for staff to briefly describe interesting encounters with patrons or research requests or uses of our collections. We’re always seeking anecdotal information to share with administrators about how our collections are used. This wiki tool enables staff to easily record this information for everyone to see.

Lastly, our wiki contains a section on Digitization Projects where we list the description, scope and status of all scanning projects. The staff who play a part in our digitization program update the wiki every time material is transferred to/from the digitization department. We list ideas that we think would make good scanning projects. Our guidelines for creating metadata for
digitization projects are included on the wiki, again so that every member of the department has access to the same document at any time.

We will likely come up with other uses of the departmental wiki. For now, it has been an important management tool to track numerous projects and add a layer of transparency to all that we do. As a result, it has helped us be better organized within the department and build a sense of teamwork.

My thanks to Ed and the roundtable for allowing me to re-publish this article, and if you have any questions about the wiki I’m sure Ed would be happy to try to answer them.

2 Comments

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  By Dean L. McLeod, August 31, 2009 @ 12:03 pm

  Hi Ed,

  Do you think this tool would be appropriate (useful) for a smaller organization, such as a County Archive? Thanks for your response,

  Dean McLeod
  San Francisco, California

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  By Ed, August 31, 2009 @ 12:53 pm

  Absolutely! Even if you’re a lone arranger, keeping track of this data in a wiki is a smart thing to do. You have it wherever you go and it’s backed up (assuming you trust the wiki provider). The staff here have appreciated having access to this data in one place that everyone else can see. I use it everyday to track digital project progress, finding aid progress, processing progress, etc. What was tough at first was having everyone remember to input data. I wish I could share it with you but it contains internal data that is not appropriate to share outside the organization.

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