User-Generated Content

People think I'm kidding when I say that I'm here hanging out with the geeky librarians. Hah. We here a IL2007 are so geeky, our slides include all sorts of internet memes up to and including CAT MACROS. "IM IN UR WIKI ALTERIN UR REALITY". :D

Web 1.0 Democratized access to information. In order to contribute, you actually had to have resources. Server space, coding, etc.

Web 2.0 Democratized participation. We a bigger role in participating and creating content on the web.

User generated content: comments, tags, ratings, photo, blogs, audio and video, wiki contributions, etc.

Why User Generated Content? Because we don't know everything. Insufficient metadata. findability and refindability. Stories people tell are of value. Interacting with materials creates a more personal connection. People are already doing it!

--Tags
folksonomy- system of organizing through tags.

flickr, del.icio.us, technorati

why tags? lets people make sense of content using their own vocabulary. help people to refind their own content. help people to discover new content. A good solution for content that can't be formally catalogued.

However-- tags cannot be controlled. Plural vs. Singular issues. Dashes & underscores. Multiple words can describe the same concept. People tag selfishly. (beach, to_read)

improving tagging? Tag clouds! Give you popular tags and reccomended tags to make tags more uniform. Clustering on flickr. Jaguar -- car, cat, guitar.

Examples:

Picture Australia Project
National Archive in the Netherlands -- comments allow users to identify the content of a photo.
Yellow Springs history
NCSU special collections puts photos in flickr pools. Comments again allow for reidentification of the subject matter.
Library Thing. tags, reviews, suggestions using tags.
Bookspace-- Hennepin Co. site for booklovers. Comments. Lists/readers advisory.
Penn tags. Del.icio.us for Penn State University? Shows up in the catalog! (This resource has been posted in Penn tags. Lists where, by whom, and what tags.)
Roc Wiki - Rochester People's Guide.
Denver evolver - teen site. You tube contest. What do you do in/what do you like about the library?


Issues: Moderation. How to deal with spam, vandalism. How to make this happen? Differentiate between user content and institutional content. Make it easy and appealing to contribute. No big registration process. Evaluate your population.

Tags cannot be the end-all be-all. You may miss good content that hasn't been discovered/tagged yet.

meredithfarkas.wetpaint.com