In thinking contemplating further about Sally Ellis’ article on collaboration, one of the points that really struck me was her note on the Make History Project of the 9/11 Memorial Museum. I really love the idea of collaborating on the documentation of history and began to think about historical events that could have benefited from being documented to a greater degree, and how collaborative histories could function in public libraries, archives or museums. In doing a little more research, I came upon Jake Barton’s TED talk about The Museum of You. The video is about 15 minutes, but if you have an extra 15 minutes in the day to spare, I think it’s really worthwhile.

It really illustrates how valuable collaborative efforts can be, especially in building community, aiding in reconciling tragic events, and documenting an oral history that would otherwise be lost. The documentation of daily life in history, as Barton points out, has long been recognized as valuable. Today, advancements in technologies, the rise of the Internet and open source platforms allow us to document and share our oral histories to a greater degree. I think a great project that exemplifies this is Story Corps (discussed by Barton), which invites ordinary people to enter a booth, fitted with microphones, to have a conversation. These conversations are then preserved in the Library of Congress. It’s a pretty amazing project, and listening to the conversations (or stories) on the site can be pretty emotionally overwhelming! But it’s incredible to be able to capture people just as they are in present day. One conversation in particular really tugged at my heartstrings (played in the Barton talk as well), I’ll link it here.

Projects such as Story Corps and the 9/11 Make History Project really got me thinking about how emotional connections can aid in public interaction, and how oral history can also be an interactive process (that is that it involves both listening but also talking/responding). It’s interesting to see how this could work within communities and public libraries. Story Corps was stationed in New York, but had it been in a smaller rural town or library, I really think that oral histories could weave each community closer and have each person feel part of the collaborative process.

On a final, brief and semi-related note, I’ll just direct your attention to another project I think is really neat. It’s called Humans of New York by photographer Brandon Stanton. The website (which also has manifestations on Instagram/Facebook/Tumblr) contains a catalogue of portraits of individuals living in New York along with a short story about each individual. It’s a pretty ambitious project, but in thinking about this catalogue of people, I keep thinking how would this play out in a smaller town or library? I’ll contemplate that for a little while longer.

References

Barton, J. (2013). The Museum of You. TED Talk. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/jake_barton_the_museum_of_you#t-920162

Ellis,S. (2014, March). A History of Collaboration, a Future in Crowdsourcing: Positive Impacts of Cooperation on British Librarianship. Libri 64: 1-10. Retrieved from http://www.crowdconsortium.org/wp-content/uploads/A-History-of-Collaboration-a-Future-in-Crowdsourcing-Positive-Impacts-of-Cooperation-on-British-Librarianship.pdf

Stanton, B. (2015). Humans of New York. Retrieved from http://www.humansofnewyork.com

Story Corps. (2015). [website] Retrieved from http://storycorps.org

In thinking about Sally Ellis’ (2014) reading on A History of Collaboration, a Future in Crowdsourcing: Positive Impacts of Cooperation on British Librarianship, I began to think about other positive ways in which crowdsourced could have a powerful and positive impact.

I have come to have a special fondness for ‘crowdsourcing’ and crowd-sourced information.  I have only recently discovered how  powerful and extremely valuable it can be, and online tools today make it easier to aggregate data crowdsourced materials (though I don’t think that the online world and crowdsourcing are inextricably linked). What resonated with me in Ellis’ paper was her encouragement to utilize new technologies and crowdsourcing to achieve our goals as information professionals.

One topic of recent growing interest to me is how information professionals are playing an increasing role during disasters or crisis.  It really makes all too much sense as  information professionals are equip with skills in understanding information seeking behaviours immediately (and could possibly apply this to traumatic events).

In looking at the ways social media was used in recent disasters, we can understand how valuable crowdsourced information can be.  What continues to strike me in these discussions is the use of Twitter during the Japan 2010 Earthquake and Tsunami.  During and immediately after the earthquake, Twitter was a prominent platform for victims of the disasters to both report the event, and to request aid and supplies. By using crowd-sourced materials through a social media platform such as Twitter, news of the event could be broadcast globally (and almost instantaneously) from a local perspective. Similar to Ellis’ note on the Make History Project having the ability to hold many views of the same event (in her example she uses the example of 9/11), this very local and varied perspective of the same event would be otherwise impossible to document on such short notice (especially in such extreme conditions) through solely traditional media methods.  As another benefit by using Twitter individuals seeking shelter and supplies could connect with organizations through common tagging systems. In a similar manner (using tagging systems) aid and government organizations could aggregate data to find what supplies were most needed, and which areas needed those supplies most. Of course, as mentioned by Ellis, there is always a slight issue with user-generated data and the consistency of tagging systems (as aggregating data was surely chaotic with different tags and in a different language).  However, having said that, I do consider Twitter to be a valuable tool in collaboration, especially with emphasis on the tagging system as an information aggregator, and on the re-bloging (or re-tweeting) function.

I think that by using crowd-sourced materials we, as information professionals, can gain a greater understanding of information seeking behaviours in different contexts.

On a final note in thinking about the ways we can utilized crowdsourcing and crowdsourced information, I really enjoyed Clay Shirky’s (2014) poignant note on collaborative efforts and successes out of previously failed attempts.  As future information professionals, I think that by using social media, we have the opportunity to recognize programs or services that aren’t working and use crowdsourced information to improve in those areas.

References :

Ellis, S. (2014). A history of collaboration, a future in crowdsourcing: Positive impacts of cooperation on british librarianship. Libri, 64(1), 1-10. doi:10.1515/libri-2014-0001

McKinsey & Company. (2014 March, 4). The disruptive power of collaboration: An interview with Clay Shirky (video). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxJ-g7y1uSw