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Social MetadataSocial media enables a broader range of contributions and sources for metadata creationLibrary metadata helps users locate resources that meet their specific needs. But metadata also helps us understand the materials we find and evaluate what we should spend our time on. The creation of social metadata is driven by the passion people have to share their interests with others of like mind. Online destinations for these activities tend to be sites where people define themselves by their passion, such as a discipline-specific Web site run by a scholarly society or a fan club. Or the destination may have a very large user base where even a small percentage who share interests can find a sufficient number of compatible enthusiasts, such as Flickr groups or national archives sites for genealogists. Library catalogs are traditionally not where people share their interests. People take catalog references to library assets and share them where other enthusiasts gather. The cultural heritage organizations in the RLG Partnership are eager to take advantage of user contributions to enrich the descriptive metadata created by libraries, archives and museums and expand their reach into their user communities. For the past year, a 21-member RLG Partner Social Metadata Working Group from five countries has been reviewing social metadata sites, analyzing the results of a survey sent to social metadata site managers, and discussing the factors that contribute to successful—and not so successful—social metadata sites of most relevance to libraries, archives and museums.
The working group reviewed 73 sites with social metadata features. Social metadata takes many forms: tagging, comments, reviews, images, videos, ratings, recommendations, lists,links to related articles, etc. Success depends on the site’s objective. Increasing traffic is not necessarily the prime driver. Some sites are looking to connect with a new audience, while others want to gather user contributions. A number of cultural heritage organizations have successfully used the Flickr community to identify “mystery photos” or the source of illuminated manuscript pages. The National Library of Australia’s Historic Australian Newspapers, 1803 to 1954, is an example of harnessing the passion of genealogists. Within its first year, with no publicity, enthusiasts edited more than five million lines of OCRd text. We received responses from 42 site managers to our survey, conducted in October—November 2009. We were pleased that 40 percent of the respondents were from outside the U.S.; 24 percent were from Australia and New Zealand. Ten of the sites originate from academic libraries and archives, followed by national libraries or archives, nonprofit organizations not affiliated with any institution, museums, historical societies, consortia, other cultural institutions, public libraries, plus one botanical garden and one special library. The respondents confirmed what we had already suspected: offering social metadata features is a recent development. Sixty-two percent of the sites had been offering social metadata features for two years or less, and 10 percent were not even public yet. The key objectives among these respondents were to build user communities and increase traffic and access to their content; more than half also wanted to enhance the descriptions of their resources. These objectives differed a bit depending on the site’s affiliation. A surprisingly high 75 percent of the sites moderate user contributions. A majority responded that neither spam nor users adding inappropriate contributions were a problem. A very high percentage—over 90 percent—considered their sites successful because they received good feedback and expanded their audiences. The unsuccessful sites had few contributors.
Attracting user contributions is key to success. The working group, through its survey, readings and interviews, has identified several factors that drive user contributions, including: leveraging a sense of community; tapping into existing communities of fellow enthusiasts; and giving users a sense that they are contributing to the “brand” of the institution or community. We hope that our recommendations will enable cultural heritage institutions to leverage users’ enthusiasm while enhancing their own resource descriptions and extending their reach to new communities.
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