The Library of Congress releases a report on the success of Flickr Commons
The Library of Congress has released a report discussing the results of their experiment to put a few thousand historical photos on flickr and allow users to add tags, comments, and notes on the photos. They’ve deemed the project a success, gathering lots of additional information about photos including personal stories from commenters’ family histories. The LOC has employees verify user-contributed information such as details on subject or location before adding it to the official description.
The report does mention some concern with the presence of rudeness or snarkiness that results when you open a project to the public: “Notes (annotations left directly on the photos) have some utility, such as pointing out specific persons in a crowd or deciphering the words on a sign or placard. Notes are also a means of adding graffiti-type messages and smart-aleck humor to the images, which is a cause for some concern among Flickr members and Library staff.”
Link: Library of Congress Blog
On an unrelated note, here’s a comic depicting an alternate method than what we discussed in class for calculating the impact of a researcher’s work based on their citations:
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1108
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