Weldon: Knowledge Sharing Through MS SharePoint
training, 5 but the department was interested in content types, and user automatically generated
the management of its Reference Desk. This “My Site”. 9
would include the online reference transaction Ennis and Tims suggested that a library could
collector, announcements, issue tracking, and use SharePoint as a data collection tool with the
the latest changes to a Reference Manual Wiki. data saved in a database on the server. The
Librarians used the following SharePoint com- SharePoint platform was used to create request
ponents to accomplish this: Document Library; forms to request educational sessions. Reports
Wiki Page Library; Announcements; discussion could be viewed through an Excel spreadsheet.
board; Links; Calendar; Issue Tracking; Survey; Another form type was created for reference
Web Pages; RSS Feeds; Site Aggregator or Page librarians to enter transcript from chat sessions
Viewer Web part (Displays Reference Tracker on other data. The data was captured in Excel
built in MS Access). 6 and Access to create real-time reports and
charts. 10 Documents could also be linked to the
Information and Library Services' Document captured data for a knowledgebase used by the
Management Team at University of Maryland reference librarians.
University College has "three remote circulation
pick-up and return locations" located in the A SharePoint platform was also used to manage
same state but training was not steady. The files associated with a budget subsidy project in
Document Management Team (Access Services - a portal site using a connection between Excel
Circulation and Interlibrary Loan) figured out and Access to show billing information by
how to provide steady training and updated month, status, and pricing and user information
documentation for the "remote circulation in real time. 11 In order for SharePoint to work,
points". The objective was to bring their de- everyone involved needed to be on the same
partment's knowledge together in one place page. There had to be a plan of action or Share-
(p.136). They used the following components Point governance plan that would define what
for their SharePoint solution: wiki; document type of system was needed before the system
library; e-alerts; document version history; cal- could be designed and implemented. The ulti-
endar; links; announcements; page view web mate outcome was for a plan that allowed a step
part (Twitter's OCLC "tweets"). 7 by step method to reach small goals. In the end,
a complete system would be created through the
Mitre's Information Service department created increments of time.
"nine cluster groups" to cover the subject inter-
ests of the organization. Each cluster had a Through SharePoint, co-workers would be able
"lead" in charge of planning meetings, setting to capture and share ideas, information, com-
agendas and ensuring "cross-cluster communi- munication, and documents and facilitate inter-
cations" would occur. A "subject matter expert" nal participation in surveys, discussions, and
was placed in each "cluster group" dependent on shared documents “24x7”. 12 Electronic docu-
the subject of the cluster group's subject area. ments could be checked in, checked out. You
They wanted support for managing information could also activate document version control so
collections and a method to communicate up to that staff who would be using specific docu-
date information about their projects. The ments would know how current they were.
SharePoint components used were wikis and Staff can easily create workspaces for meeting
RSS news alerts. 8 discussions, surveys, documents, task lists, is-
sues, contacts, announcements, Web links, and
Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences used calendars and other collaboration needs that
University of Alabama—Birmingham’s deploy- increase their productivity in a central location.
ment of the SharePoint 2007 platform. The web-
site/portal management capabilities of the plat- What usually makes this platform fail in organi-
form replaced Microsoft Outlook folders and zations is the lack of proper skill sets to identify
shared network drives. The library staff im- your organization’s needs. It is best to map the
plemented permissions, content tagging, search needs to the SharePoint features in order to un-
feature (for whole site, sub-site, list, or library), derstand what you really want SharePoint to do
Collaborative Librarianship 4(1):23-30 (2012) 24
