Wikis and project planning

Last week I attended an information session on a new initiative for archivists in the UK called the Archives Pace Setter Scheme (I blogged about it here).

This scheme aims to highlight the new and innovative projects that archives and archivists across the UK are doing and at the same time to promote better project working and planning within the archive sector.

I had thought of lots of projects that I could do at work, some of which involve web 2.0 tools like our blog or flickr experiments and others which are more routine but new to us like a cataloguing database.

I hadn't thought about using web 2.0 tools to manage projects or plan them until I read this post about the use of wiki software by the Archives Service Centre at the University of Pittsburgh. They are using it internally within their department to monitor the progress of finding aid projects, unprocessed collections and digitisation projects as well as to record ideas for student projects and feedback from users. More details are available in this newsletter article or on ArchivesNext.