A Critique of the Proposed National Education Policy Reform
Staff Expertise in the Networked, Digital Environment
1. Staff Expertise in the Networked,
Digital Environment
Josh Greenberg
Director, Digital Strategy & Scholarship
The New York Public Library
@epistemographer
96. In the eyes of a digitally
networked public, the value and
identity of a collecting institution
derives from service, expertise,
and community organization
rather than possession of
collections
Hinweis der Redaktion
Spent long time thinking about these artifacts.
Hit libraries first
When dealing with physical artifacts in the physical world, you have to make hard choices - where to put it, how to use limited space to interpret, etc.
someone has to make those choices: chooser, gatekeeper, interpreter
downstream flow of knowledge (from PUS)
Pendulum swing to wisdom of crowds
Pushed to not include our own metadata as tags - devaluing our own expertise while chasing crowd
We have models of crowd engagement: wikipedia loves art, flickr commons, tagging left and right; however, where’s the role of the interpreter or curator in this?
Digitization means more than imaging
NEH grant example
Unexpected opportunities
Neither of these is new under the sun; we had indices, and we had published literature. The difference is in scale and volume.
While we’re working on the hard problems of digitization, interoperability and collaboration, I want to propose a simple hack that can make our special collections much more visible through both search and conversation.
I figured out a good algorithm
or
I figured out the best way to roast a chicken
or
I figured out the best way to avoid speed traps
For close to a year and a half, we’ve had a somewhat stealth effort up at nypl.org/blog
Blog as very specific mechanism to get small bits of knowledge into the digital landscape and discoverable.
Preprocessed reference?
Youtube ~ 50% viewed on Youtube, ~40 on D*S, ~10% elsewhere
Always some demand for physical; however, digital access is increasingly good enough, and easy digital access will crowd out difficult physical access.
Unless we resurrect the limitations of the physical world in the digital collections we’re creating...
Note: Not that artifacts/collections aren’t important; they are, but just not identified with institution in the digital space.
The more important resource for the long-term value of a library, museum, archive, etc. is staff expertise.
