[Mediawiki-l] Transplant help?

[Jentzen Mooney]

Hey All,
So recently  I have taken over the wiki at my work. I got myself the 
O-Reilly "MediaWiki" book.
Things have been going pretty well I am learning more about all the 
things I can do with the wiki.
*To the question part:*
I has be brought to my attention that the wiki installed is  
mediawiki-1.6.8. I would like to using all the new included stuff in the 
current wiki version like API,etc...
I have read about the trickiness of upgrading your wiki if you are below 
a certain version, plus I do not have Admin rights to the box that the 
wiki is installed on.
How do I go about Transplanting the data that is in the current wiki to 
a newly installed wiki?
All I care about is the Article contents,text,images, etc.. I don't need 
the categories, templates or transparency that I have been using.
I have about 250 Articles so don't want to do it by hand.
Ideas? Thoughts? Suggestions? Tips?
Thank you
/Jentzen