CIL2008: User Generated Content (and more info on LOC & Flickr)

Roy Tennant gave a talk on User-Generated Content to a full crowd. He's going to cover both real (photos, movies) and descriptive content (tag, ratings).

He plugged "Social Software in Libraries by Meredith Farkas.

Why (user generated content)?

• More (decent) content is better -- Let's find ways for our users to contribute
• More access is better
• Help provide more personalized service
• Can foster interaction and community
• "We don't know everything" - Meredith Farkas
  
• More data trumps better algorithms

Contributions to Content

• Added new content

Descriptive Contributions

• Helping to describe the content
• Provide missing information
• By exposing content on the web & providing a way for people to contribute info. Lower the barriers to participation.

Library of Congress Photos on Flickr

• 5.4 million views in one month
• More than 10,000 unique tags (out of nearly 55,000 total)
• Acquired more than 11,000 contacts through Flickr
• More then 3,500 comments posted by more than 1,400 users
• Have updated 68 records based on user input

What have they accomplished?

• Higher profile of its collections
• Community engagement
• Corrections and additions to metadata
• Sparked discussions and elicited personal histories that relate to photos. People did really investigate the full images
• Higher visibility for the LC blog

Exploiting the knowledge of the masses

• Many eyes increases the likelihood of getting things right
• Library staff are often distant from localized knowledge of items in their collections
• the web can provide a feedback loop

Contributions to Discovery

• For example, Hennipen Public Library --> bookspace

Tags

• User terminology
• Low barrier (only the cost of typing)
• Low overhead (uncontrolled)
• Can have redundant terms
• Odd grammar
• Steve.Museum
• LibraryThing
• Aggregating synonyms

Third Party Providers

• SpringShare
• Library Thing for Libraries
• ChiliFresh -- a review engine for your library

Thoughts & Considerations

• Our idea of "content" may not their idea of content
• It's going to be messy and that's (mostly) okay
• There are ways to increase effectiveness

Issues to Consider

• What are your goals?
• Are you set up appropriately to meet those goals?
• Are there strategies you can use to maximize benefit?
• How to distinguish between user and library content?
• Will you need to vet/moderate?
• Is the impact worth the investment?

Where from here?

• User engagement is a GOOD THING
• Need to get up to speed on how to foster engagement in our systems
• Need to get savvy about how best to use things like tags more effectively

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Technorati tags: CIL2008, Digitization