Bookselling Information Quick and Easy -- By Wiki

Among the new features of the American Booksellers Association's redesigned trade website, BookWeb.org, is a Booksellers Wiki. A wiki, which derives from a Hawaiian term meaning "quick," is a web-based tool that allows users to collaboratively create an expanding reference work on a given subject. (The best known wiki is www.Wikipedia.com). ABA added the wiki to BookWeb so that members would use it to create their own reference work on topics relevant to independent bookselling.

Only ABA member booksellers can access the wiki, to which they are encouraged to contribute by writing, editing, correcting, and updating relevant and useful information.

Dan Cullen, the director of ABA's information department, who oversees BookWeb's new wiki and blog, explained that the wiki "lets booksellers create a compendium of information that is relevant to them -- they have the opportunity to create their own encyclopedia of bookselling."

Cullen compared the BookWeb blog, ABA Omnibus, to the wiki, noting that the blog is a series of updates about a particular topic, usually authored by one person or a small group. "A wiki utilizes the wisdom of crowds," he said. "Blogs are generally characterized by a distinct voice and point of view, while a wiki is really more of a source of information."

For its launch, ABA staff seeded the wiki with a few entries, but Cullen reported, "Pioneer book-wikipedians have already begun to create content with entries on book series and on 'One Book' programs in communities around the country."

Gary Robson of Red Lodge Books in Red Lodge, Montana, a frequent Booksellers Forum contributor, told BTW that he immediately saw tremendous potential for the wiki. But, he added, "The only way [useful] content is going to get there is if we bring it there." Noting that booksellers often complain they have difficulty responding to customer requests for, say, book three in a series or the title of a series' final book, he posted several book series and waited "to see if anyone else jumped in."

Other booksellers responded by contributing more series, as well as making a few changes and updates. "This kind of information is very tedious to compile individually - it's an immense amount of work. Ingram frequently doesn't have sequence numbers in their listings, which means neither does our BookSense.com database," he explained. If each bookseller adds one or two series to the BookWeb wiki, he told BTW member booksellers would create "a fantastic resource for everyone."

Robson envisions other uses for the wiki -- such as sources for sidelines, tutorials on various aspects of bookselling, and recommended readings on particular subjects.

"You could do some of those things on a forum," he continued, "but [forums] are not live linked, and you can't easily go in and edit or update something. It is a little tricky to convince people my age [over 40] to go [to the wiki] and run with it, but it's a remarkable tool."

The BookWeb wiki has been made as accessible as possible with a minimum of restrictions and guidelines, according to Cullen. "Registering and contributing [to the wiki] is not a daunting task at all; it's not complicated or time-consuming. We want it to develop a life of its own with as many users as possible."

Robson concluded, "Booksellers [who participate in the wiki] learn that it's not a resource developed by someone else -- it's not a gift from 'on high' -- it's information for us, by us." --Nomi Schwartz