Teenspot Proposal

Teenspot Wiki Proposal
The technology that we propose to implement through our public library is a wiki based, blog enabled Readers Advisory for Young Adult books and media.

Brief Description of the Technology
A wiki is software used on a Website that enables the creation of a Website using standard templates for layout of the Web pages, and content is adding to those pages using a WYSIWYG text editor, also known as a rich text editor. WYSIWYG is an acronym for “what you see is what you get,” and makes adding content to a Website as simple as typing in a Word document. Many wikis have a WYSIWYG text editor built into them enabling people that have no knowledge of HTML the ability to easily create Web pages with a standardized look and feel. Because of their collaborative functionality wikis are used for many different purposes from corporate intranets, content management systems, and community Websites.

When a user edits a wiki page the data is saved into a database and the original copy is saved as well. This backup makes it easy to “roll back” to the original page if necessary, similar to hitting undo when working in a Word document. The roll back feature makes it easy to fix a page if it has been vandalized, spammed or otherwise tampered with. A concern with using a wiki is that it will not have the same layout as the libraries current Website. Traditionally, the way wikis are laid out is not consistent with a "regular" Website; however, this does not necessarily have to be the case. Libraries can apply CSS formatting to their wiki to make it look the same as the rest of their Website. For example, the "Florida State University Libraries use MediaWiki...but have styled the wiki to look consistent with the rest of their Website" (Farkas, 2008).

Teenspot: An Overview
The service being created is a wiki based Readers' Advisory for Young Adult books called Teenspot, created by librarians and library staff to share book lists, book talks, discussions through a blog feature, and useful links with each other and with the public. It will also serve as a place for Young Adults to find information about books that they might be interested in and also read and write reviews in the teen reviews blog, a function that can be implemented through library/school curriculum collaboration.

Teenspot:Building a Community and Creating a Reference Source
Teenspot will be a cross of content created by librarians and library staff, while also highlighting and linking to relevant book awards (The Alex Book Awards, The Edgar Allen Poe Awards, and other YA specific book awards), the ALA's Top Books of the year, and also provides Readers with links relevant to the authors, such as their personal Websites or blogs, or pages written about the authors at Library Thing and at other useful, reputable Websites. These links help librarian’s better understand the books and the authors who write them, and provides an easy way to learn of the authors' other works.

Garnering support from Young Adults and creating a rich curriculum development tool, the teens that volunteer at the library during the summer reading program will be invited to participate in the collaboration by reading books and then writing book reviews. There will be small incentives offered for the reviewers to encourage participation, and could vary from elevated responsibility as volunteers, to small gift cards (for example, a $5 Starbucks card or a $10 iTunes card).

Wikis, such as Teenspot, are already in use in libraries and similar organizations as valuable knowledge sharing tools, but Teenspot is unique in its design, as you will see. Throughout this proposal you will learn how Teenspot stands out as a reference tool, and also how other wikis and Web 2.0 technologies have been highly successful in filling the needs of libraries.

The Ongoing Benefits of Teenspot
The benefits of the ongoing development and use of Teenspot are two-fold. Firstly, Teenspot serves as a valuable Readers' Advisory tool, unique in its participatory nature. Through the blog feature and the promotion of using Teenspot as a curriculum tool in schools, library staff will gain a better understanding of recommendations to make to teen patrons based on the reviews provided by teens through the blog feature. Teenspot ultimately provides librarians with a valuable and useful reference tool for use in their work, whether that be purchasing new materials, developing curriculum with teachers, or simply directing a patron to a book they'll really enjoy.

Secondly, the ongoing implementation of Teenspot encourages Young Adults to become active participants within the library community by involving them in adding valuable content to the site. Not only does teen involvement add useful content to Teenspot, but it also involves teens with professionals and gives them purpose in contributing to a Website that librarians rely upon. This gives teens something to be rightly proud about, and it will hopefully create in them life-time readers and life-time users and supporters of libraries.

Similar Wiki and Web 2.0 Readers' Advisory Projects: Success Stories
Libraries and librarians have been providing Readers' Advisory services for patrons dating back to the 1800's, when the services were much more informal than today and geared at providing book recommendations to the public. Over the past 25 years, (Trott, 2008) there has been a revitalization of Readers' Advisory services, and Teenspot intends to take the Readers' Advisory tradition and give it a Web 2.0 update.

Nancy Keane, the creator of "Booktalks: Quick and Simple," created a Website as a resource for librarians and teachers looking for book talks in 1995, when a teacher asked her for book talks on short notice. Keane searched the Internet and was not able to find any resources, so she took it upon herself and created Quick and Simple with only 100 book talks on a regular Website. In the 15 years since its launch, Quick and Simple has evolved into a successful collaborative Wiki that contains over 1,400 book talks (Booktalker). If you visit Keane's "about" page on the Website, she enlists new contributors by asking that anyone who uses the book talks to submit one of their own by e-mail (Keane).

A few very successful Readers' Advisory services use a collaborative, blog based model, and their content and success is proof that librarians are eager to contribute to collaborative sites that they find value in. For example, Blogging for a Good Book is a blog edited and maintained by librarians from the Williamsburg Regional Library in Virginia. Here, librarians contribute reviews to the site regularly enough that one book every day is recommended on the blog, and one staff member a week publishes new content. For an impressive list of recommendations, view their categories tool bar on the right hand column of the site. Blogging for a Good Book was launched in April, 2007, and is still running strong, proving the power of collaborative work in producing a Web 2.0 based Readers' Advisory.

Utilizing wiki technologies for Readers' Advisory services is not a new idea, and librarians in other parts of the world are collaborating together to produce shared content on Readers' Advisory wiki-based services. The Readers' Advisory Services is a wiki from Australia which librarian’s collaboratively edit to produce a vast RA service. According to their Website, there are 203 members writing content for the wiki and seven moderators, and while they do not publish usage statistics, quick browsing reveals the wealth of information contained within the wiki, and what a valuable resource tool it is.

Possible Roadblocks in Teenspot Implementation and Adoption
Libraries have a history of adopting new technologies: Within the lifetimes of current staff, we have seen the transitions from card catalogs to OPACs and from date stamping cards to circulation management systems, the replacement of reference books and quality journals with online databases, the proliferation of personal computing technology for both staff and patron use, and the rise to prominence of the World Wide Web. Yes, libraries have kept up with these changes, but it hasn't always been a smooth road and it hasn't been accomplished without resistance.

If we are going to have a smooth road to the adoption of the Teenspot Wiki, we must carefully consider the possible roadblocks:
 * Institutional Culture
 * Staff Knowledge and Training
 * Getting Buy-in from Youth Librarians
 * Getting Buy-in from Teen Contributors
 * Technology Issues
 * Support of the Technology
 * Monetary Concerns
 * Institutional Culture

Institutional Culture
Libraries and librarians have a rich history of collaboration and sharing knowledge, and the Teenspot wiki seems like a good fit for our institutional culture, placing a high value on sharing information among ourselves and with the public. However, it must be admitted that librarians, like many other detail-oriented professionals, may sometimes be uncomfortable sharing ultimate control, and the success of a wiki is dependent on sharing control of a project. One librarian may edit the work of another, and even worse--in the eyes of some--uncontrolled teens will be contributing content to the Teenspot wiki.

In garnering support and buy-in from librarians, it is important to highlight that wikis include sophisticated tools for recovering from accidental, malicious, or simply undesirable changes. On a wiki nothing need ever be lost, because one can simply "roll back" the unwanted changes. Regardless of these fail-safe mechanisms, some may still be uncomfortable with this degree of collaboration and prefer to participate by submitting book talks and reviews on the Teenspot Blog. Postings to the blog are not intended for collaboration and can be edited only by the original poster or a wiki administrator.

Teens will not be editing librarian-created content and will not have access to edit entries. Their involvement will be restricted to contributing book reviews to the Teenspot Blog. Registration will not be open to just any person with Internet access. Librarians will sign teens up through summer reading programs and school outreach programs. Having their real identities and the trust of teachers and librarians will ensure a high level of accountability.

Staff Knowledge and Training
Staff knowledge and training will be essential to the success of the Teenspot wiki. Fortunately, not everyone needs to be a tech-expert or be equally expert in wiki authoring. Top-tier power users create templates and set up frameworks to help others create and organize their content, just as we did for the Browse by Genre feature of our prototype, and the Author and Title pages. Content creators/organizers use these templates and the organizational frameworks to build well organized, attractive, and easily browseable content. Less skilled staffers may create content that more skilled staffers can then organize. Even those not yet familiar with wikis can participate by posting book talks and reviews to the wiki blog. Software accessibility of Teenspot has always been a primary concern, as user-participation is the driving force of the success of Teenspot. Teenspot also hosts the Teenspot Help Blog, where questions can be asked by leaving a comment and answers will be posted as new blog entries.

The learning curve for the Teenspot Wiki will be gentle, with staffers of every skill level able to make meaningful contributions. While formal training in the advanced aspects of wiki authoring would certainly be beneficial, it is not essential for a meaningful contribution. For those with the motivation to learn on their own, Wikia, our wiki service provider, offers an extensive set of help pages for documentation.

Buy-in from Youth Librarians
As with any new technology and new project, regardless of how great it might be, Teenspot is going to have to be sold, and people are going to have to buy into it. Two separate populations need to be sold on the importance of Teenspot: firstly and most importantly, librarians need to be convinced that not only is Teenspot a useful, quality reference tool, but that it is a tool that they want to be participating in creating and maintaining. Without the full adoption of Teenspot by librarians, Teenspot will flounder as a valuable resource, its potential lost. The second population that has to buy-in to Teenspot are the Young Adults that are going to be adding the important personal reviews of the books, happening in the form of a blog, to Teenspot. Teenspot is unique in that it combines the professional expertise of Librarians with the real world contributions of the public (a feature that has been highly embraced in sites like Amazon.com).

Teenspot is a tool created by librarians for librarians, a tool that embodies the spirit of collaboration and sharing, but Teenspot is more than that. Teenspot is a valuable reference source for librarians who are buying books, organizing reading programs, interacting with youth and their parents, and in many other, countless situations. In constructing Teenspot, we organized the wiki and hand selected the technology to be adaptable and embraceable, meaning that Teenspot already has the mechanisms for expansion built in. Pages are created from generic templates which make adding content easy. Teenspot is built on a wiki, which mentioned earlier, is a technology that is built for accessibility and many are already familiar with the wiki format, having used Wikipedia as a reference tool and having collaborated on internal knowledge sharing wikis. With the ease of the technology and the value of the site, we hope for an easy buy in from librarians.

Buy in from Teen Contributors
As mentioned previously, an integral element of Teenspot is the blog reviews contributed by teens. Support and adoption of Teenspot by Young Adults is dependent upon the reach of the embrace of it by librarians and teachers. The blog and review feature of Teenspot is intended as a curriculum tool for educators, to bring in students as part of summer reading programs, and other similar programs to, contribute valuable content to a professional resource. Without the support of librarians and teachers, there will be no buy-in of Teenspot by the youth. We are confident that when teens are brought into the role of collaborator they will produce quality, high value content to the site, making Teenspot an exciting, unique reference tool.

Technology Issues
Like any project making use of technology, technology issues face Teenspot. Firstly, there is the issue of hosting content on the Web: if Teenspot were to rely on a third party for hosting the wiki, then we are trusting the entire content of the site to a company that could someday go out of business, taking all of the content with them. On the other hand, content can be self hosted, which is continually less expensive and easier to do than it was in the past, but still requires costs in the form of subscriptions and in the form of people-power. In grappling with these two options, Teenspot, in its official launch, will be launched as a self-hosted Website, Teenspot.org, as the costs of hosting and producing Teenspot are expected to remain relatively low and thus outweigh the costs of relying on a third party site to do the hosting. Subscription costs to the wiki technology are relatively negligible, and so are the hosting costs. The real costs are going to come in terms of people-power, which will be spread out and thus highly manageable. A tech-savvy librarian can easily publish the wiki software to a site.

=Software Recommendations= Several options exist for launching Teenspot and the software used in doing that. Teenspot has decided, for reasons previously stated, to self-host the site, incurring some fees for subscription and for work hours. Currently, as a prototype, Teenspot is hosted by Wikia; Wikia uses MediaWiki software which is a free server-based software licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). MediaWiki is the software that is used for Wikipedia, and as such is known as a solid, reputable, and reliable technology that many people are already familiar with. The MediaWiki software is an established technology dating back over ten years. Because of the software's history we are confident that the technology will be sound and effective to meet the needs of our library.

In rolling out the official release of Teenspot, the same MediaWiki software will be used at Teenspot.org, providing easy movement of content from Wikia to Teenspot.org.

=Software Maintenance= Any updates to the software are done by the Wikia software staff. The Teenspot Wikia librarians will have a designated librarian export the usage statistics to an Excel spreadsheet at the end of each month. This data will be compiled into quarterly and yearly reports to determine the effectiveness of the site. The librarian will also back up all of the data from the wikia pages to the server located at the library on a weekly basis. In the event that the Wikia site crashes some data would be lost with this method, but it will be negligible. The data will be maintained in this manner so that the library is proactive in the event of any unforeseen issues with the Wikia service, making it necessary to move the wiki to another provider.

=Training Issues and Training Policy= As our team of staff contributors works through creating the wiki and creating posts they will create a Q & A page to help out new users for future use. Currently new users can go to "community" and then "forum" and visit the help desk to enter any questions they may have, and users can post a question to one of the admins talk pages to receive help using the wiki. There is also the option to use a keyword search in the search bar, bringing up common questions and answers in the help forum of Wikia.com. On the Teenspot main page, users can follow the Need Help? Section, and find a direct link to the Wikia help pages, and also a link to the Teen Spot Help Blog. The Help Blog offers stumped users the opportunity to ask a question in the form of a comment, and receive an answer as a new blog post.

Teenspot wiki has a Social Media Use Policy clearly posted on the main page of the wiki to inform users of the moderation policy for inappropriate content.

=Assessing the Impact of Teenspot= The library will assess the impact of the wiki service by using wikia stats. To use Wikia stats the library staff just enters "Special:WikiaStats" in the search toolbar. The stats are tracked for how many articles were written, how many contributions for each user, changes to the database, imports and pictures. The staff can export the data into an Excel spreadsheet each month to track the stats for the wiki and determine the growth of the user base. After the wiki is established the library can also use the stats to compare the stats of the Teenspot wiki to a wiki that provides a similar service by using wikia-wide statistics.

=Works Cited=

(2009). Booktalker. Library Journal, 134(5), 49. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database.

Farkas, M. (2008). CMS the Wiki Way. American Libraries, 39(11), 35. Retrieved from Academic SearchPremier database.

Keane, N.J. (2010). Booktalks:quick and simple/about. Retrieved from http://nancykeane.com/booktalks/about.htm

Trott, B. (2008). Building on a Firm Foundation: Readers Advisory over the Next Twenty-Five Years.

Reference & User Services Quarterly, 48(2), 132-135. Retrieved from Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts with Full Text database.

Appendix I
LISWiki Entry on Readers Advisory The LIS Wiki entry on Readers Advisory includes several links to both successful Readers' Advisory blogs and Web-based traditional Readers' Advisory. http://liswiki.org/wiki/Readers'%27_advisory

Slide Presentation

 * Proposal Presentation on Zoho
 * This link will direct you away from the Teenspot Wiki. To return to the site you will need to click the back button in your web browser.