CIL 2007 Wiki (like you weren’t expecting it!)

By Meredith Farkas 1/30/20075 Comments

I just wanted to give people a head’s up that the wiki for this year’s Computers in Libraries conference is up and people are already starting to add content. I’ve already got my schedule online and I’m really excited about speaking at the conference and seeing some of the terrific talks on the roster. I’m bummed that I’m speaking at the exact same time as the talk I most wanted to hear Student’s World: Photo Diary Study (seriously, I should have become an anthropologist!). Hopefully someone will take good notes for me!

One thing that’s different this time around is that PBWiki now has a hot WYSIWYG editor, which is pretty sweet (though I hear it only works with IE and Firefox)! Hopefully this will make wiki editing a lot less intimidating for folks who didn’t want to learn wiki syntax. I know some wiki folk are anti-WYSIWYG, but honestly, if we want to get average folks using wikis, this has to be the direction we move in.

Last updated on 1/30/2007

Meredith Farkas

Meredith Farkas is a faculty librarian at Portland Community College in Oregon. From 2007-2021, she wrote the monthly column “Technology in Practice” for American Libraries. Meredith was honored in 2014 with the ACRL Instruction Section Innovation Award, in 2008 and 2011 with the WISE Excellence in Online Education Award and in 2009 with the LITA/Library Hi Tech award for Outstanding Communication in Library and Information Technology. She has been writing the blog Information Wants to be Free since 2004.

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5 Comments

Kristofer

1/30/2007, 9:01 pm

Meredith, I will look forward to hearing/seeing at least one of your presentations.
Janie H.

1/31/2007, 4:31 pm

I would love to join you and Rachel Van Noord for lunch!

I will add my schedule and information as soon as I return from my ski vacation in VT. I am probably not that far from you right now. We are at Smuggler’s Notch teaching Alex to ski and he is doing great for a 3 year old.

Thanks for putting the wiki together.
Jim Milles

1/31/2007, 5:15 pm

I’ve been thrilled to see wikis adopting WYSIWYG. I haven’t been following the debate, though; why are some wiki folk opposed to WYSIWYG?
Meredith Farkas

2/1/2007, 3:00 pm

Hey Janie! Cool! I will add you to our lunch on the wiki 🙂

Yes, you are very close by! In fact, we just drove by the Stowe area on our way home from dinner in Burlington last night and it was snowing cats and dogs. We live right by Montpelier, in the middle of the state. I hope your trip ends up being fun! At least we have some snow now! 🙂
Meredith Farkas

2/1/2007, 3:06 pm

Hi Jim, here is one explanation why WYSIWYG is problematic http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/WYSIWYG. As you see, it’s more of a technical consideration, but some wikis like PBWiki have successfully implemented it (which may work better for a closed source wiki like PB than an open source one like Pm).

Here is another description of the myriad complications involved in doing this http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WYSIWYG.