In this two-hour workshop, you will learn how to set up and use a research wiki to organize notes, tags, bibliographic annotations, project diaries, logs and other research materials. The workshop is open for folks with all levels of technical experience.
DATE Thursday, November 4th – 10am EST
LENGTH 2 hours
LOCATION Zoom
RSVP – https://researchwikiworkshop.eventbrite.ca
As researchers, we take in information from a variety of sources & fields, and are constantly building up information and understanding connections between ideas. By leveraging the interlinked structures of a wiki, you can work on your note-taking and writing in a networked way that fits your needs and with an internal structure that adapts to what you need. A wiki works well to store and interconnect information and ideas. Importantly, reading, writing, and thinking through research are not neatly separated processes or stages. Using a research wiki reflects this: shifting from reading to writing is quick, and you can keep as many notes side-by-side as you want, combining them in different ways.
Doing long-term research is a slow and incremental process, and note-taking and cross-referencing tools can greatly support its refinement. Often, such tools are proprietary, cloud-based, or structured as subscription services, which might be obstacles for their use at different moments. With a free and open-source wiki tool, you can leverage many of the benefits of note-taking systems, but in more flexible ways. The Tiddlywiki tool and the Teia plugins we will use are customizable, quick to set up, and accessible through web browsers.
The workshop is open for folks with all levels of technical experience. The wiki only requires a browser to work (Chrome and Firefox work very well with it). An optional free software (available for Windows, Mac, and Linux) is recommended to facilitate some things, and installation will be shown.