Between Commodification and Engagement: On the Double-Edged Impact of User-Generated Metadata within the Cultural Heritage Sector

Abstract

This article challenges common assumptions and opinions regarding the use of the social web by cultural heritage institutions by framing the phenomenon of user-generated metadata within the larger context of the commodification and the engagement process of our cultural heritage. Theoretical reflections on both the negative and positive long-term outcomes of the social web for libraries, archives, and museums are presented and confronted with empirical observations regarding the use of social tagging and user comments. This combination of a theoretical and an empirical approach will provide original insights into the long-term implications of user-generated metadata for cultural heritage institutions.

Social curation on the website Pinterest.com

“…User comments, which have been observed in the literature to offer valuable sources of potential metadata, are plentiful on Pinterest. We collected 510 user comments from a random sample of 40 pins and found that four of the six types of comments described by van Hooland, Rodriguez and Boydens (2011) were present in our sample: sharing opinion & judgment, engaging in dialog, sharing a personal history with the image, and providing additional narrative details. We suggest that Pinterest represents a sharing and curating experience that offers insight into information use, reuse and creation on the social web.…”

Open Social Knowledge Creation and Library and Archival Metadata

“…In addition, how much value do these contributions truly add? Some studies of user-contributed metadata have concluded that tagging only added 'low level semantics' of correcting mistakes and adding narrative details (Hooland et al 2011). In this view, tagging is more about engagement than substantial contribution.…”

“…Some argue that library metadata does not merely facilitate discovery and scholarship but has a larger effect on the greater world of knowledge organization and its social and cultural functions (Andersen and Skouvig 2006). We need to determine how metadata reflects our interaction with cultural heritage in a broader and more indirect sense within society (Hooland et al 2011). That is, how do our descriptions reflect and shape reality beyond acting as markers for finding particular items?…”

It's about Time!: Temporal Aspects of Metadata Management in the Work of Isabelle Boydens

“…34 In this latter paper the authors note that studies of user-generated metadata in Web2.0 environments have focused on the usefulness and efficacy of such metadata for current users, but the authors are particularly interested in other questions, namely the responsibility of cultural heritage institutions towards the past we are preserving and future uses of those materials. (It is amazing how differently we can evaluate a practice depending on the questions we ask of it!)…”