Outreach and Co-Curation: Engaging with Library Users

Outreach and Co-Curation: Engaging with Library Users Assoc. Prof. Axel Bruns ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation Queensland University of Technology [email_address] – http://snurb.info/ – @snurb_dot_info

Social Media
Working definition:
Websites which build on Web 2.0 technologies to provide space for in-depth social interaction, community formation, and the tackling of collaborative projects.
 Social media = Web 2.0 technologies + Community

Image by barjack

Threat or Opportunity?
Threats?
explosion in content creation
new sources of quality content (e.g. blogs, wikis)
competing knowledge structures
self-organising knowledge communities
Opportunities?
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 XKCD

Decline of traditional roles in the value chain:
producer  distributor  consumer
Decline of stable content forms and formats
Beyond Content Production

Image by
spierzchala

Image by zota

Anyone Can Write, Edit, Publish, …
(as producer)
produser
(as user)
this is produsage
content content

( http://www.research.ibm.com/visual/projects/history_flow/capitalism1.htm )

Key Principles
Shared across collaborative social media environments:
Open Participation, Communal Evaluation: the community as a whole, if sufficiently large and varied, can contribute more than a closed team of producers, however qualified
Fluid Heterarchy, Ad Hoc Meritocracy: produsers participate as is appropriate to their personal skills, interests, and knowledges; this changes as the produsage project proceeds
Unfinished Artefacts, Continuing Process: content artefacts in produsage projects are continually under development, and therefore always unfinished; their development follows evolutionary, iterative, palimpsestic paths
Common Property, Individual Merit: contributors permit (non-commercial) community use of their intellectual property, and are rewarded by the status capital

Image by B Rosen

Opportunities for Libraries: Outreach
Outreach:
Use social media for updates – viral marketing
Build loyal communities around library activities
Build digital / social media / produsage literacies
Encourage users to become content creators
Smart Services CRC Social Media Reports:
1 – State of the Art ( http://snurb.info/socialmedia-vol1 )
2 – User Engagement Strategies
( http://snurb.info/socialmedia-vol2 )

Building Communities
Communities are concentric:
Marginal members General members Community leaders

Success in Social Media
Engaging with produsage communities:
Be open.
For users (access) and with users (transparency).
Seed community processes by providing content and tools.
Model desired behaviour, assist productive participation.
Support community dynamics and devolve responsibilities.
Engage promising community leaders as they emerge.
Don’t exploit the community and its work.
Utilising their contributions is fine, but you don’t own your users.

Image by Maproom Systems

Opportunities for Libraries?
Co-Curation:
Harness users to identify community interests
Collaborate with users who are enthusiasts for specific topics
Track new developments across areas of interest
Work with users to curate produsage content
Librarian expertise as added value for produsage content
Encourage community leaders to pursue professional careers

( http://delicious.com/url/f2b8a68f6b131de40634dd94e3065cf6 )

Folksonomies
Golder & Huberman , 2005

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

National Library + Flickr = Re-Picture Australia

Image by KingDaveRa

Image by mike.in.ny

Growing the Community
Encouraging constructive participation:
leaders number of members status marginal members encourage commitment model desirable behaviour

Harness Community
Community knowledge is key:
Enthusiasts help cover those areas which ‘real’ experts miss
Human knowledge too broad and diverse to rely on specialists alone
Towards a creative economy:
Need staff skilled in co-curating and adding value to produsage content
Opportunity for enthusiasts to develop professional careers
Image by greenpeace.italia

Viral Marketing
Axel Bruns
Associate Professor
ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation
Creative Industries Faculty
Queensland University of Technology
Brisbane, Australia
Email: [email_address]
Blog: http://snurb.info/
Twitter: @snurb_dot_info
Produsage: http://produsage.org/
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/snurb
Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond:From Production to Produsage (Peter Lang, 2008)

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Outreach and Co-Curation: Engaging with Library Users

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