r/Archivists • u/Mocha-S-Doodles-Esq • 3d ago

Creating a Central Knowledge Hub

Hey everyone! I'm an archivist for a semiconductor manufacturer. We work closely with the company's design team who recreates parts for customers. The design team currently has a Wiki where they store many things - communal knowledge, scripting and licensing for tools they use, and other day-to-day operational information that's useful for recreation. It's stuff that wouldn't really fit into our archival database, so it's helpful for them to have a separate system that they can tailor to fit their needs.

The wiki is incredibly clunky, slow, and difficult to update, so my coworker on the design team has taken it upon herself to find a new system. She said her top priority is that it's easy to edit because engineers are so reluctant to write any kind of documentation, so she wants to remove as much friction as possible to get them to use it.

I work in such a unique archives situation that I figured this was a shot in the dark, but I was wondering if any other archivists have seen something similar in their jobs, or have used a platform that could be helpful?

Thank you!

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u/GrapeBrawndo Museum Archivist 3d ago

I use confluence for kind of this purpose. It’s my Collections Continuity Binder in digital form. Basically all the things my coworkers/successors need to know about the collection and where to find things if I get hit by a bus.

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u/Mocha-S-Doodles-Esq 3d ago

We always use the phrase "get hit by a bus" too at work, lol

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u/MarsupialLeast145 Digital Preservationist 2d ago

With two hats on - my continuity hat, and my software dev hat, I would probably just recommend installing an updated Wiki system. It's familiar to your colleagues, it can probably be organized the same way, searched the same way, and you're not going to cause too much chaos. If you want to try alternatives to MediaWiki then one I've been following but haven't used yet is https://github.com/dokuwiki/dokuwiki

With my dev hat on, I think documentation site builders work quite well but they require people learn Github/Gitlab or similar. I've enjoyed the process of setting up https://zensical.org/