I’m really interested in the Libraries in 2023 session. I’m not entirely sure what the official theme of the session was (you only get flavors of the theme from bloggers… we all tend to report from our own angle) but the angle I’m most interested in is the idea that appears to have been brought up by Ron Gardner, that libraries are in the creation business, too. It’s not just about the information that we buy or lease for our community, but about what the community produces with that information as well. (Comments on this issue are here.)
I’ve been thinking about this content creation business for a while, pretty much since I first heard about the remix culture. And as I think about my job, as instructional design librarian, I see myself as more and more of a content creator. I write blog posts, create twitter feeds, and I’m working on a few multimedia tutorial projects. It seems that my job is a lot like that of a student producing for a class, or a professor producing for publication. If a bunch of us in the university are all producing content, it seems like the library should play a role in the production arena, beyond just providing the tools.
Content creation for students is going far beyond the traditional papers, too. If we support multimedia work, are we as library workers prepared to become more comfortable with doing this type of production ourselves? I didn’t fully appreciate all the copyright hurdles and challenges associated with audio and video until I started playing with remixing my own. In having that experience, I am better prepared to help students (and professors) who are creating their own multimedia works.
So, thus far, I’m talking about entirely user generated projects: videos for class, websites for projects, etc. But there’s also a movement that suggests the incorporation of user generated content into the collections, too. Meredith Farkas gave a presentation on this at another conference. In her blog post about the presentation she said this: “I really believe that the way people view (and the stories they tell about) a historical work is just as important as the work itself. The impressions truly have historical value, and to make it easy for people to contribute those impressions gives cultural heritage organizations the opportunity to make their online collections so much richer.” Amen!
Of course, much of this content creation discussion has been going on for some time now. I’m just glad to see that it’s being picked up by more and more people.
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