Project Highlight Archive

Wikis: Facilitating CGIAR Teamwork

When the team behind the CGIAR Virtual Library (CGVlibrary) was presented with the CGIAR's Science Award for Outstanding Scientific Support last year, each and every team member was recognized for the vital role they had played in creating the CGIAR's first System-wide library. The award also reinforced what the team members had known for the two years they had been working together: people with the same goals and aspirations who come together to pool resources, synchronize efforts and facilitate collaboration can achieve much more than the same number of individuals ever could working on their own.

Since it was officially launched in June 2006, the CGVlibrary has quickly emerged as an essential online resource of high quality agricultural research information, with usage statistics jumping from 507 searches during the first month to the present daily figure of almost 1,000 searches.

In tandem with this increase in usage, CGVlibrary Project Coordinator Luz Marina Alvaré and her dedicated team of information managers, IT professionals and researchers from across the CGIAR have continued to work behind the scenes, adding new online journals and databases, assembling new topic-specific resource sets (QuickSets) and a user guide, and deepening levels of integration among existing resources.

During Phase I of the Project, this new resource was put together under a tight deadline. With less than a year to select the necessary software, carry out the technical configuration, assemble the resource lists and conduct the Beta-testing, the team was only able to achieve its goals due to a strong community of practice and effective communication throughout the entire process.

These assets continue to prove invaluable as the second phase of Project gets underway. Phase II aims to broaden and deepen the integration of resources in the CGVlibrary, making it easier for researchers to find and retrieve the information they need, while also publicizing the library to researchers both within and beyond the CGIAR.

"We can't be happy with just creating the Virtual Library," states Luz Marina. "If there's one thing that's certain in today's digital age, it's that things can change very quickly. We have to be able to adapt to change in order to meet the needs of our users and provide our visitors with current agricultural information produced by CGIAR research."

In a bid to prepare the team for any possible changes and to increase access to and visibility of information related to managing the CGVlibrary Project, Luz Marina and her colleagues at IFPRI have established the CGWiki. Team members can now log on to this collaborative online workspace to participate in programmed activities, suggest new resources, report problems, track solutions and implementations, and stay current on usage statistics.

Previously, team members had expressed frustration over having to search through personal hard drives and e-mail inboxes to retrieve the latest versions of Project documents and found it difficult to keep track of specific activities and the people responsible for working on them. With the wiki, they now have around-the-clock access to the latest Project information via a single website and can easily keep track of the activities of other team members.

The CGWiki works because the team members have agreed to update information related to their own activities. And in the process, they are creating a knowledge base of the entire Project in one place.

The CGIAR information managers are already reaping the benefits of the CGWiki during biweekly conference calls with the ICT-KM Program to discuss the progress of and future plans for the CGVlibrary. Grace Kamau (ILRI) suggested the Livestock Quickset by adding it to the to-do list; S. Srinivas (ICRISAT) posted valuable information about the uses of Web 2.0 in the Project; Carlos Saa (CIAT) marks out suggested resources once they have been added; Peter Shelton, Nancy Walczak and Luz Marina (all from IFPRI) use the CGWiki regularly; and their colleagues at Bioversity International, Rome, can simply log on to the wiki to gain instant access to the latest information related to the Project. Moreover, the process of monitoring and evaluating the Project is greatly facilitated by having all Project activities and their corresponding completion dates accessible via a single portal.

Drawing on the experience gained from using the CGWiki, IFPRI's Library and Knowledge Management Team recently began training researchers in the use of wikis and other Web 2.0 tools for managing collaborative projects. There are also plans to launch a wiki version of the CGVlibrary user guide in the coming weeks.

The CGVlibrary team plans to step up its own training activities, using wikis, blogs, RSS feeds and other Web 2.0 technologies to reach new users and keep them up-to-date with new Project activities and facilitate feedback from users on how to improve the virtual library service. These experiences will be highlighted and shared openly among colleagues present at the upcoming Web2forDev conferences scheduled to take place from September 21-28 in Rome. For further information, visit the conference website at http://www.web2fordev.net.