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