Outreach and Co-Curation:Engaging with Library Users

Assoc. Prof. Axel BrunsAssoc. Prof. Axel Bruns

ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and InnovationARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation

Queensland University of TechnologyQueensland University of Technology

a.bruns@qut.edu.au – – 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

2

Image by barjack

3

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:

14

Marginal members

General members

Community leaders

Success in Social Media

• Engaging with produsage communities:1. Be open.

For users (access) and with users (transparency).

2. Seed community processes by providing content and tools.

Model desired behaviour, assist productive participation.

3. Support community dynamics and devolve responsibilities.

Engage promising community leaders as they emerge.

4. 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

23

Growing the Community

• Encouraging constructive participation:

leaders

number of members

status

marginal members

encourage commitmentmodel 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: a.bruns@qut.edu.au

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)