engaging your community through cultural heritage digital libraries
DESCRIPTION
Based on the book Exploring Digital Libraries, this ALA Techsource webinar examines cultural heritage collections in the context of the social web and online communities. Calhoun and Brenner explore the possibilities and provide examples of digital libraries' shift toward social platforms, along the way discussing how to increase discoverability and community engagement, for instance through crowdsourcing.TRANSCRIPT
Supporting Digital Scholarship: Engaging Your Community Through Cultural Heritage
Digital Libraries
ALA TechSource Workshop
Karen Calhoun
Aaron Brenner
October 8, 20141
2
Calhoun, Karen. Exploring Digital
Libraries: Foundations,
Practice, Prospects. Chicago:
ALA Neal-Schuman, 2014.
Chapter 7 “Digital libraries and
their communities”
Chapter 10 “Digital libraries and
the social web: collections and
platforms”
3
Learning objectives
• Consider the context in which digital libraries are
discovered locally, regionally and globally
• Be acquainted with some ideas for examining your
assumptions about your audiences and their needs
• Evaluate some ways to increase the “social life” of
your cultural heritage digital collections
• Become familiar with some examples of crowdsourcing
in cultural heritage digital libraries
4
Poll:
Are you responsible for managing, or helping to
manage a digital library?
Yes – cultural heritage digital library
Yes - subject-based or institutional repository
Yes – other
Yes – several of the above
No
5
Two Main IssuesVisibility and reach (discoverability)
• “Unlearn” some core
assumptions (DLs as
destination sites)
• Understand the
context in which
digital libraries are
discovered locally,
regionally and globally
“Social life” of digital
libraries
• The web as a platform
for participation
• Changing community
expectations
• From collections to
platforms
6
Getting Attention on the Web
“You Are What You Link”Source: Adamic and Adar 2001
7
Discoverability: Integrated and Decentralized
Integrated discoverability
• “The Libraries will need a [pre-indexed] system or
service layer that integrates metadata from
internal, external, owned, licensed, and freely-
available data sources selected by library staff”
(Hanson et al. 2011)
Decentralized discoverability“The Libraries should generate … metadata for local collections and data sources
that can be exported, harvested, or made available for crawling by
external systems.” (Hanson et al. 2011)
An Example of Best Practice (you are what you link)!
8
IntegratedDiscovery
Content from
Creators and Their
Agents
Local Catalog Local Digital Libraries
Locally managed
resources Feeds from
other sources (fee or free)
Local discovery
layer
Decentralized Discoverability
Uploaded/harvested/crawled/indexed metadata
& links
Library cooperative commons
services and registries
ArchiveGridSearch engines (Google, Google
Scholar)
National, international, and
domain-specific collections and
services
National, international, and
domain-specific collections and
services
National, international, and domain-
specific collections and
services
Europeana
DPLADigital Lib.of Georgia
Pause for questions, comments
11
Online Community Life Cycle
Life cycle model of success factors for digital libraries in social environmentsBased on Iriberri and Leroy (2009)Calhoun, K. (2014). Exploring Digital Libraries. p. 161.
12
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If a network-based service’s intended communities do not actively engage and participate, the service will (eventually) die.
14
Social digital libraries?
• Most continue to operate from a traditional,
collections-centered service mode
• The social nature and roles of a library are
typically lost – DLs and repos are mostly read-only
(“web 1.0”)
• A digital library that incorporates social web
approaches continues to be the exception rather
than the rule.
15
Changing Community Expectations
When individuals who use social sites and tools approach digital libraries (and repositories), they bring their social web expectations with them.
The digital libraries that continue to operate from a traditional, collections-centered service model (that is, nearly all of them) are now faced with finding their place in the fast-moving, chaotic information space of the social web.
16
The web as a platform for participation
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What is the social web?• The term “social web” refers collectively to the web sites, tools and
services that facilitate interactions, collaboration, content creation
and sharing, contribution and participation on the web
• The distinguishing characteristics are human and machine-to-
machine interactions
• The social web supports many types of online communities, and not
just those who participate in social networks
• In addition to the many web services and APIs that support the social
web, the large-scale take-up of mobile smartphones, tablets and
other mobile devices has created a huge scope of opportunity for
social web growth
18
Digital libraries and the social web
• The advent of the social web provides an opportunity to
shift the focus and core assumptions of digital libraries …
– Away from:
– Their collections and information processes (selecting,
organizing, providing access, etc.)
– In favor of:
– New, community-centered ways of thinking about services,
expectations and potential social roles.
19
From static repositories to social platforms?
“Social platforms” are active, open, modular, gregarious and “chatty” with other software, servers, people and organizations
Dan CohenHistory scholarExec. Director, DPLA(Formerly of Center forHistory and New Media)
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What would change?
Transitions associated with the shift to social digital librariesand repositories (figure 9.1, p. 214, Exploring Digital Libraries
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What to do?Inventory columns/questions
NameSizeTarget Audiences/communities Usage (stats, webanalytics)
Rankings
Similar/related/competitor sites
Last needs assessment?
Benefits to target audiences
Communications/outreach activities
Potential for web services/social features?
What else?
Inventory of your digital collections repositories?
22
Some Possibilities to Consider
• Needs assessment of your
intended audiences
• Environmental scan: look
at examples in other
organizations
• Examine your digital
library using the online
communities life cycle
model (slide 12)
• Inventory your digital
collections to identify
opportunities to make
them more social and
aligned with community
needs/practices
• Don’t do anything within
your organizational
“silo” – reach out, look
for willing partners and
pilot/demo projects
What else?
23
Questions:
• In what ways have you reached out to
give a user focus to your digital library
work?
• What are challenges – social,
technical, resources, expertise – you
face in doing so?
24
Platforms: more than open access, opening knowledge creation
Europeana Business Plan 2014http://pro.europeana.eu/documents/900548/f19cc4ff-56a3-422c-83d9-f156ecc9b4ca
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Characterizing crowdsourcing for cultural heritage
“[A]sking the public to
undertake meaningful
tasks … in an
environment where the
activities and/or goals
provide inherent
rewards for
participation”
- Mia Ridge
less: more:
26
Enriching content:Transcription, tagging, identification
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Participatory Collection-Building
http://www.nowseethis.org/peopleshistory
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Immediate History / Memorials
http://marathon.neu.edu/http://911digitalarchive.org/
29
Connecting in person:Roadshows & Collecting Days
30
Engagement-First Projects: NYPL Labs
What it means
fundamentally,” Vershbow
continues, “is re-imagining the
very roles of librarians and
curators, positioning them not
only as custodians of physical
collections, but as leaders of
online communities.”http://www.nypl.org/blog/2011/09/15/all-hands-
deck-nypl-turns-crowd-develop-digital-collections
Labs doodle by Michael Lascarideshttp://www.nypl.org/collections/labs
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Beyond transcription:
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Ultimately, crowdsourcing is about far more than collecting data
Trevor Owens:
http://www.trevorowens.org/2012/03/crowdsourcing-cultural-heritage-the-objectives-are-upside-down/
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Cooper Hewitt Collections developer Sebastian Chan:
The site “puts the museum properly ‘on the Network’...
...asserts the value of even incomplete object records in the face of falling
public funding for digitization and culture in general
...communicates to the public that the museum is human and fallible, just
like them
...is aimed at both scholars and casual visitors, and increasingly machines
and robots that inhabit the web”
Getting collections on the network
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Wikipedia: for mutual benefit
http://vimeo.com/78005986
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/wikipedia.org
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Microdata: richer representationon the Web
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Leveraging Linked Data to support communities:
multi-lingual support
Linked data for mapping communities
37
http://linkedjazz.org/public_demo_mapping/
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Other strategies for engaging & socializing digital libraries:
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Chatty and unpredictable:Serendipity, bots, and applications
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Localizing views & contributions
https://www.historypin.org/map/http://inkdroid.org/ici/
Visualizing the data inside collections
http://web.stanford.edu/group/ruralwest/cgi-bin/drupal/visualizations/us_newspapers
“...[R]esearchers may want to interact with a collection of artifacts, or they may want to work with a data corpus. Some may want to search for stories in historic newspapers. Some may want to mine newspaper OCR for trends across time periods and geographic areas. Some may want to see what a specific user tweeted. Some may want to look at the spread of an event hashtag across the world in a day.”
Leslie Johnston, “Data is the New Black,” The Signal: Digital Preservation, October 14, 2011, http://blogs.loc.gov/digitalpreservation/2011/10/data-is-the-new-black/.
...and uses we cannot anticipate:
43
Happening now: 680 other ideas
https://www.newschallenge.org/challenge/libraries
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No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main.Meditation XVII, John Donne
Thank You!
[email protected]@pitt.edu
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Over to you!
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References (1/3)• Adamic, Lada A., and Eytan Adar. 2001. “You Are What You Link.” In 10th
Annual International World Wide Web Conference, Hong Kong.
http://www10.org/program/society/yawyl/YouAreWhatYouLink.htm.
• Calhoun, Karen (2014). Exploring Digital Libraries. Chicago: ALA Neal-
Schuman
• Chan, Sebastian. “Cooper-Hewitt Online Collection | MW2013: Museums
and the Web 2013.” Accessed September 25, 2014.
http://mw2013.museumsandtheweb.com/bow/cooper-hewitt-online-
collection/.
• Charles, Valentine, and Cécile Devarenne. “Europeana Enriches Its Data
with the Art and Architecture Thesaurus.” Europeana Professional.
http://www.pro.europeana.eu/c/portal/layout?p_l_id=1278264.
• Cohen, Dan. “The Social Life of Digital Libraries,” April 2010.
http://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/226651.
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References (2/3)
• De Jager, Wiebe. “Helping Cultural Heritage Institutions Get Their Content on Wikipedia |
Europeana,” August 6, 2014. http://blog.europeana.eu/2014/08/helping-cultural-
heritage-institutons-get-their-content-on-wikipedia/.
• Europeana Business Plan 2014. Accessed March 31, 2014.
http://pro.europeana.eu/documents/900548/f19cc4ff-56a3-422c-83d9-f156ecc9b4ca.
• Gan, Vicky. “All Hands on Deck: NYPL Turns to the Crowd to Develop Digital Collections.”
Accessed September 25, 2014. http://www.nypl.org/blog/2011/09/15/all-hands-deck-
nypl-turns-crowd-develop-digital-collections.
• Hanson, Cody, and Heather Hessel. University of Minnesota Libraries - Discoverability
Phase 2 Report, February 4, 2011. http://purl.umn.edu/99734
• “LD4L Use Cases - Linked Data for Libraries - DuraSpace Wiki.”
https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/ld4l/LD4L+Use+Cases.
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References (3/3)
• Owens, Trevor (2012) “Crowdsourcing Cultural Heritage: The Objectives are Upside
Down”. http://www.trevorowens.org/2012/03/crowdsourcing-cultural-heritage-the-
objectives-are-upside-down/
• Pattuelli, M. Cristina, Matt Miller, Leanora Lange, Sean Fitzell, and Carolyn Li-Madeo.
“Crafting Linked Open Data for Cultural Heritage: Mapping and Curation Tools for the
Linked Jazz Project.” The Code4Lib Journal, no. 21 (July 15, 2013).
http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/8670.
• Proffitt, Merrilee, and Sara Snyder. “CNI: Wikipedia and Libraries: What’s the
Connection?” presented at the Coalition for Networked Information Fall 2012
Membership Meeting, December 10, 2012. http://vimeo.com/61522767.
• Ridge, Mia. “Open Objects: Sharing Is Caring Keynote ‘Enriching Cultural Heritage
Collections through a Participatory Commons.’” Accessed March 31, 2014.
http://openobjects.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/sharing-is-caring-keynote-enriching.html.