Although I’m not currently using either site actively, I thought it might be interesting to share two separate ways in which I’ve used TiddlyWiki in research and writing.
CQC Leadership Project
This is an ongoing piece of work in which I’m interested in how the Care Quality Commission discuss and talk about what it means for a care home to be ‘well led’. The TiddlyWiki implementation was a site that I created as a way to summarise that work - an alternative (or additional) publication if you like. There are a couple of features that I thought were interesting.
Firstly, the map on the right hand side is a way to explore connections between elements of the project (nodes) that is less linear than traditional ways of communicating about our research. I very much like the idea of exploring these connections and in enabling someone to access the whole ‘report’ without needing to treat it as a formal article. The content that you see as you hold your mouse over these elements is the same as you see if you click on a link with the same title in the text to the left.
The other element of interest is the ability to use links to explore elements of the text. As this site is on hold (even if the project continues) many of these are missing or incomplete, but if you click through some I hope you will start to see the possibilities for a more engaging way of communicating.
Although the page is ‘frozen’ the project continues - I have two excellent undergraduate students working on elements of this work and hope that this will lead to a collaborative publication with one or both later in the year.
Research Notebook
This implementation is completely different. This is primarily a site to keep Rhetorical Precis so that they can be searched dynamically. By opening the sidebar (red circle at the top) you are able to search for terms that feature in the title, precis or notes made about any of the sources listed.
If you try ‘disability’ you should see 2 items with the term in the title and 3 matches overall.
This was a function I really wanted - and still really value. Although I have not been able to keep up with the site it is likely to be something that I keep returning to. I have many more precis written than I have been able to put on the TiddlyWiki. This is the version of TiddlyWiki that I am likely to come back to and work on again.
Last thoughts
Saving TiddlyWiki is a little stressful - although I do get it working using TiddlySpot Saver I still find that I have to save many more times then I might ordinarily, and to keep checking it has worked in another browser window.
The possibilities of using this to collaborate are fantastic. Theoretically either or both of the sites I’ve created might have been opened up to research teams which extends the possibilities even further and which would mean that resources and work could be shared between individuals and across sites.