leveraggging social metadata - oclc · pdf fileleveraggging social metadata karen...

Leveraging Social Metadatag g

Karen Smith-YoshimuraKaren Smith [email protected]

2009 OCLC Di it l F W t 2009 OCLC Digital Forum West

Los Angeles, CASeptember 16-17, 2009

Metadata…

… helps us find data.… helps us understand the data we

findfind.

… helps us evaluate what we should spend our time evaluating.

Leveraging Social Metadata, Karen Smith-Yoshimura

2009 OCLC Digital Forum West , 2009-092

Examples of “social metadata”



Photographer: James Ring; Photographic Archive, Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand

Examples of “social metadata”



“The collections represented here havepbeen chosen and curated by tribal consultantsworking in collaboration with University andMuseum staff.”

Steve Museum Project

Museum professionalsfound 88% of user tagsg“useful”.

If you found this work using this term you ou d s o us g s ewould you be surprised?

86% of user tags not86% of user tags notfound in museumlabel copylabel copy.

Steve in Action: Social Tagging Tools and Methods Applied



Steve in Action: Social Tagging Tools and Methods AppliedSusan Chun, Tiffany Leason, Rob Stein, Bruce Wyman, and Beth Harris. A Workshop at the Museums and the Web Conference, Indianapolis, April, 2009

Wikipedia article ranked #1 of 31,000,000lt i G l h f “ d k”results in Google search of “gdansk”



“A vote to end edit wars”A vote to end…edit wars

The closest vote



RLG Partners Social Metadata Working Group22 RLG P ff f fi i

• Drew Bourn, StanfordD l C b ll N ti l

• Daniel Lovins, Yale

22 RLG Partner staff from five countries

• Douglas Campbell, National Library of New Zealand

• Kevin Clair, Penn StateChris Cronin U Chicago

• John Lowery, British Library• Mark Matienzo, NYPL• Marja Musson, International • Chris Cronin, U. Chicago

• Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, U. Minnesota

• Mary Elings UC Berkeley

j ,Institute of Social History

• Henry Raine, New-York Historical Society• Mary Elings, UC Berkeley

• Steve Galbraith, Folger• Rose Holley, National Library

of Australia

y• Cyndi Shein, Getty• Ken Varnum, U. Michigan• Melanie Wacker Columbiaof Australia

• Rebekah Irwin, Yale• Lesley Kadish, Minnesota

Historical Society

• Melanie Wacker, Columbia• Kayla Willey, Brigham Young• Beth Yakel, U. Michigan,

S h l f I f ti



Historical Society• Helice Koffler, U. Washington

School of Information

Staffed by John MacColl, KarenSmith-Yoshimura

Social Metadata Working Group

Focus:

• User contributions that can enrich the d i i d d b descriptive metadata created by libraries, archives, and museums.

• Issues that need to be resolved to communicate and share user communicate and share user contributions on the network level.



20 questions, 7 subgroups

• Assessment: Objectives? Success metrics?• Content:• Content:

— What user contributions would most enrich LAM resources?

— What are exemplars of good social media sites?

• Policy:— To what extent is moderation necessary?— How do we encourage contributions?— How do we gauge authenticity?

• Technical and vocabularies: How do we enable users? Issues around vocabularies/folksonomies?



users? Issues around vocabularies/folksonomies?

Social metadata site reviews

71 reviews of 35 sites, sites characterized



Some observations

• Great variety of sites – many new• Success tied to objective and audience, not

necessarily traffic• Value in leveraging “sense of community”• Some sites heavily moderated, others not at

all• Strict credentialing limits effectiveness• Lots of features of little value if not used

and require more documentation, overhead



Some observations – cont.

• Few sites use ranking, filtering mechanisms, tt t id i ituse patterns to guide visitors

• Institution-specific sites have fewer t ib ti th t itcontributions than aggregate sites

• Tags contributed on network-level of more l value

• Tagging is most useful when there is no i ti t d t ( h t id di )existing metadata (eg photos, videos, audio)

• Need “critical mass” and “sense of it ” ( i ti t d)



community” (existing or created)

Why contribute? (Prelim)

• Tie-in to community of fellow enthusiasts

• Ongoing conversation from own livesg g• Pragmatic• Feeling of contributing to the “brand” • Feeling of contributing to the brand

of the institution or communityE h t ti• Enhance own reputation



Some promising areas

• Sites like Flickr to identify “mystery photos” d id t tand provide context

• CommentPress (from Future of the Book) for t l ti g t ibi g digiti d d t i translating, transcribing digitized documents in different languages and scriptsIntegration of user corrections (Flickr commons • Integration of user corrections (Flickr commons, WOTR, YourArchive, Historic Australian Newspapers – 5 million lines of OCR’d text Newspapers 5 million lines of OCR d text corrected)



Leverage the enthusiasm

“It's fun, interesting, educational, a ‘trip’.”

“Makes me feel I have a stake in the collections.”

“Delightfully self-aggrandizing.”

Some Steve museum tag contributor comments,



Explore social metadata sites…

… or if you know of others the RLG Partners Social Metadata Working Group should review, go to:Metadata Working Group should review, go to:

oclcresearch.webjunction.org/social_metadata



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