IL2007: User-Generated Content

Internet Librarian 2007

User-Generated Content
Meredith Farkas and Josh Petrusa, Norwich University

Web 1.0: Democratized access to information

Web 2.0: Democratized participation What is user-generated content?

• Comments
•      Ratings
•      Wiki contributions
•      Uploading photos
•      Contributing to online communities

Why User-Generated Content?

•      We don't know everything
  •        When we allow other people to contribute knowledge, we can all benefit from it
•      Insufficient metadata
  •        Making information objects found online more findable and richer
•      Findability and refindability
  •        finding images on flickr, for instance
•      Stories people tell about items are of value
•      Interacting with materials creates a more personal connection
•      People are already generating their own content

Tags

•      user created descriptive metadata
•      Folksonomy - system of organizing through tagging
•      There are many ways to describe items
•      Tags help us create collections (i.e. IL2006)

Why tags?

•      Lets people make sense of content using their own vocabulary
•      Helps people to re-find their own content
•      Helps people to discover new content

Why not tags?

•      No control
•      people can use plural or singular words, use dashes and underscores, etc
•      Multiple terms to describe a single concept
•      People tag things selfishly (means nothing to you, but means something to me)
•      People tag incorrectly

How do we improve tagging? Examples of User-Generated Content

•      Picture Australia project
•      Western Springs History
  •        Wordpress blog
  •        pictures of historical homes in Western Springs, IL
•      NCSU - historical photos in flickr
•      LibraryThing
  •        tons of user-generated metadata
  •        cool tag clouds
  •        you can make suggestions and recommendations based on tags and other user-generated content
•      BookSpace (from Hennepin County PL)
  •        public library users engaged in generating content
  •        also have comments on catalog records
•      Penn Tags
  •        put tags into catalog
•      RocWiki
  •        Rochester

Issues

•      Moderation
  •        if you're going to get involved in user-generated content, you have to have time to moderate
•      Tech issues -- how are we going to make this happen?
•      differentiation between user content and institutional content
• Do we support? Do we train?

My thoughts:
I'm glad that the presenters brought up some of the issues associated with supporting user-generated content, particularly those related to education/training and support of our users as they generate their own content. The examples were also interesting. Meredith Farkas has the slides, including links to projects, on slideshare.net.