PART 1!
A few people have asked me about my experiences at the National Digital Forum (NDF) 2008 Conference in Auckland. I had a fantastic time; the conference was incredibly interesting, motivating and practical. There was so much information and so many useful titbits that I’m not really able to present it to you all in one go. So you’ll have to stay tuned for part 2, 3, 4…..! I will put links and other references in the text, but just email me if you want to know more.
The NDF:
The NDF is a coalition of New Zealand government departments, galleries, libraries, archives and museums with the aim of “working together to enhance electronic access to New Zealand’s culture and heritage.” The focus is on the need to collaborate, co-operate and share knowledge and expertise between the different institutions and organisations, so that we can build a strong national platform and produce quality collections of digital cultural heritage.
The event:
Owen G. Glenn Building
The theme for this year’s conference was ‘Creating value in a digital New Zealand’. The conference was held over a two day period in the enormous Owen G. Glenn Building at the University of Auckland and was attended by over 250 attendees from a wide range of organisations. There were internationally renowned speakers and workshops, forums and demonstrations where presenters and attendees reported back on everything from small community projects to significant National and international initiatives.
The content:
Let’s start with The Commons on Flickr
“The key goals of The Commons on Flickr are to firstly show you hidden treasures in the world’s public photography archives, and secondly to show how your input and knowledge can help make these collections even richer”
http://www.flickr.com/commons
The first keynote speaker was George Oates, the Senior Program Manager at Flickr and a world renowned web designer. George’s presentation was fantastic; she started with the ‘genesis’ of Flickr and how and why it has grown to have over 30 million members in just five years. George talked about the Flickr Commons and how institutions such as the Library of Congress are using the Commons to distribute and add value to their digital collections.
There were a couple of concepts in George’s speech that were particularly interesting to me. Specifically that we need to “lose control”, to put aside some of our traditional duties and way of doing things and ‘release’ your collections to the viewer. It’s okay to put a digital image or information on a platform like Flickr, with metadata which is incomplete, or which might be inaccurate. Time is limited, staffing is limited, money is limited, you can’t do everything, but your community (be it local or international) will do it for you.
On online communities like Flickr viewers can correct the inaccuracies; they can contribute by adding tags, names, dates, locations, context, they can translate the information into another language, they can share it with a friend, they can add their own stories and their personal responses to an image, they can mix it and mash it up to create new works. In contributing they add value to your collections and broaden the collective knowledge of your community.
National Library NZ on The Commons
The National Library is the first New Zealand institution to join The Commons on Flickr, following the lead of overseas institutions such as The Library of Congress. The aim of putting these collections on Flickr is to “expose the treasures held in these collections, and show how people’s input and knowledge can make these collections even richer”. So have a look, have a play, make a comment:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nationallibrarynz_commons
Louise
