- Can you see a role for libraries in curating content from around the web?
- Do you think the curation tools we’ve been looking at this week [Pinterest, Storify, etc] could be used by libraries?
After completing the readings and watching the videos on social content curation, a number of things stood out to me. Many of the comments being made in the first video were from information professionals in the traditional sense, ie. librarians, data curators, researchers, etc. They spoke about the preservation of data and making sure that data was accessible for people to use now and well into the future. Conversely, the second video was made with professionals from the online world ie. Bloggers. They spoke about digital curation along more intuitive lines. They saw digital curation as finding the most interesting pieces of information from among the web and providing that to their audience. They talked about relying on people they trusted to provide them with sound information, as well as acknowledging that people generally respond to enthusiasm.
By applying these two different worlds into the context of a Public Library, for example, I think a happy medium would suffice. Libraries have a responsibility to preserve and provide access to material, but they also have a responsibility to engage their users and provide relevant spaces for their users to engage in as well. Online tools like Pinterest, Scoop.it, and Storify are perfect for allowing libraries to live up to their responsibilities as preservers and distributors of information. While an online tool like Pinterest may seem informal, it gives the user another perspective of the library beyond online catalogues and the traditional stacks, eg Yarra Plenty Regional Library. With the right tools and standards, I believe that libraries have the ability to really flourish in digital curation.
Lastly, I leave a link outlining ALIA's “Statement on preservation: the permanence and durability of information products”.
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