Photo Credit: Ellen Forsyth (@ellenforsyth)
Here are my Top Five Take Aways from today.
- Local content is where libraries have pulling power.
Your users can't get this stuff anywhere else and it's interesting. - The best way to expose your collection is one item at a time.
A digital narrative can be a powerful discovery interface. Telling a story with passion using one item from your collection is a great way to encourage people to explore more deeply. - Obliterate the line between physical & digital.
Which items in your collection wanted to be something else all along? - Make sure you're not getting in the way of the passion of you users.
The catalogue is a great place to have a conversation about books. Your data is a great source of material for developers. Don't put policies and protocols in place that discourage users from collaborating with you and each other. - Data is fuel for the imagination.
Don't worry about the format. Release your data because you can't possibly imagine what others will do with it! Folk will work with it however you provide it.
- Think about what data you have that might be of interest.
- Arrange for volunteers & community programs to help libraries turn content and collections into data.
- Annual library hack day (perhaps a collaborative project across libraries). Ideas are as important as building apps.
- Seed developer interest in your data with a proof of concept or even better, finished projects (maybe you have to pay for this) . Show them you value this stuff!
I really like your summary of the day.
ReplyDeleteI am still thinking through the ideas, and there are actions we can take. Some early thoughts are about making sure that library data is available for re-use, that we are not holding on so tightly that no one else can use the content, so may need to think more about wise use of creative commons, and making sure all rights management statements are accurate. Also need to think about collaboration as some of the data increases in interest the more of it that is available so there is a volume effect. This should not stop organisations from releasing data when they are going it alone.