All the World's a Library: Produsage and User-Led Curation (ARLIS 2008 Keynote)

All the World’s a Library: Produsage and User-Led Curation Dr Axel Bruns Creative Industries Faculty Queensland University of Technology http:// produsage.org /

User-Led Content Production

emerging in various domains:

open source software development

online publishing:

blogs

open news – e.g. Slashdot , Indymedia , OhmyNews

knowledge management

wikis – e.g. Wikipedia

social bookmarking – e.g. del.icio.us , digg

geotagging – e.g. Google Earth , Frappr

multi-user gaming:

e.g. The Sims , Everquest , Second Life , Spore

creative practice

e.g. Flickr , ccMixter , YouTube , Jumpcut

reviews and social shopping

e.g. Epinions , IgoUgo

image by stabilo -boss

decline of the traditional value chain:

producer  distributor  consumer

(producer advised by consumer  distributor  consumer)

(customer-made ideas  producer  distributor  consumer)

Beyond Production

A New Value Chain?

(as producer)

produser

(as user)

content content

Produsage

beyond production:

‘ the people formerly known as the audience’ (Jay Rosen)

‘ anyone can edit’ ( Wikipedia ) – users become producers of content

content is no longer a distinct product – it is a temporary artefact of an ongoing process

usage and production are increasingly, inextricably intertwined

strict distinctions between producers, distributors, and consumers no longer apply

a new “ Generation C ” ( Trendwatching.com ) of content produsers?

this is produsage

Breaking the Chains content development space set up by community or company to harbour produsage (e.g. Wikimedia Foundation; Google; SourceForge) commercial / non-profit harvesting of user-generated content (e.g. The Sims , Wikipedia on CD-ROM) commercial / non-profit services to support produsage (e.g. Red Hat, SourceForge) commercial activities by users themselves, harnessing the hive (e.g. support services, consultancies, content sales) initial IP contributions from individuals, the public domain, or commercial sources collaborative, iterative, evolutionary, palimpsestic user-led content development valuable, often commercial-grade content is created Produsage Environment (populated by produsers)

Threat or Opportunity?

Impact on librarians:

explosion in content creation

new sources of quality content (e.g. blogs, wikis)

competing knowledge structures

self-organising knowledge communities

explosion in collaborative metadata generation

everyday ‘coolfinding’ (Mark Pesce) points to quality content

self-organising knowledge communities

rapid prototyping of new knowledge structures

image by Maproom Systems

Folksonomies

User-generated ways of categorising content:

fluid and changeable rather than predetermined and fixed

palimpsestic – repeatedly erased, overwritten, revised

responsive to participants’ changing views

flat (or heterarchical) rather than hierarchical organisation

not requiring all participants to work together or agree on one view

but not chaotic: common patterns usually emerge very quickly

indicating commonly held views among many users

folksonomy: “folk-driven taxonomy”

e.g. del.icio.us , Digg , Reddit – also Google itself!

similar to well-worn, “user-generated” paths in a park

contrasted with predetermined, paved pathways

del.icio.us Tagging Patterns

Golder & Huberman , 2005

Folksonomy Effects

“ By tweaking some of the underlying assumptions behind today's Web, you could design an alternative version that could potentially mimic the self-organising neighborhoods of cities or the differentiated lobes of the human brain – and could definitely reproduce the simpler collective problem-solving of ant colonies. The Web's not inherently disorganized, it's just built that way.” (Stephen Johnson: Emergence , 2001)

folksonomic systems make such tweaks, curating Web content

multiple alternative folksonomic knowledge structures now available

e.g. Google , del.icio.us , Wikipedia , specialist portals, etc.

more alternatives can be created by interested produser communities

they will be successful if a critical mass of users sees them as worthwhile

And Librarians?

‘ Folk’ knowledge is key:

folk experts help cover those areas which ‘real’ experts miss

‘ real’ experts: tip of the iceberg

‘ folk’ experts: bulk of the iceberg

human knowledge too broad and diverse to rely on experts alone

Professional opportunities:

‘ folk’ knowledge points towards community interests and new developments

many industries developing ways to ‘harness the hive’ (e.g. through social media)

need for staff skilled in curating ‘folk’ content and combining it with ‘expert’ knowledge

also opportunity for ‘folk’ experts to develop professional careers

image by greenpeace.italia

Working with Folksonomies

QUT Creative Industries reference librarians’ tag cloud on del.icio.us

Datamining Folksonomies

Visualisations of individual users’ del.icio.us tagging patterns, by Kunal Anand

Towards the Cosmopedia

Pierre L é vy:

[The Cosmopedia] serves as a site of collective discussion, negotiation, and development. A pluralistic image of knowledge, the cosmopedia is the mediating fabric between the collective intellect and its world, between the collective intellect and itself. Knowledge is no longer separated from the concrete realizations that give it meaning, not from the activities and practices that engender knowledge and that knowledge modifies in turn. Depending on the zones of use and paths of exploration, hierarchies between users and designers, authors and readers, are inverted. ... In the cosmopedia, all reading is writing. The cosmopedia is a relativistic space, which curves when we read or write in it. (1997)