Folksonomies, also known as crowd sourced vocabularies, have proved their usefulness time and again in terms of deepening user experience and accessibility, especially in cultural heritage institutions.\u00a0 Often termed GLAMs (Gallery, Library, Archive and Museum), these institutions can use folksonomies to tap into the knowledge base of their users to make their collections more approachable.<\/p>\n

For example, when one user looks at a record for Piet Mondrian’s Composition No. II, with Red and Blue<\/a><\/em>, she may assign tags for colour blocking, linear and geometric.\u00a0 Another user may tag the terms De Stijl<\/em>, Dutch and neoplasticism.\u00a0 By combining both approaches to the painting, the museum ensures that those without contextual knowledge have just as much access to their collections as those with an art historical background.\u00a0 Linking tags can allow users to access and search collections at their needed comfort level or granularity.\u00a0 It also frees up the time for employees handling those collections, since they can depend\u2014at lease in part\u2014upon the expertise and observations of their public.<\/p>\n

The diversity of tags also increases findability levels for educational uses of online collections.\u00a0 If an elementary school teacher wants to further her students’ understanding of movements like cubism, she can just open up the catalogue of her local museum to explore the paintings tagged with ‘cubism.’\u00a0 This becomes increasingly important as field trips are increasingly unavailable to public schools and larger class sizes require more class prep than ever.\u00a0 With the linked folksonometric vocabulary, the teacher need not fight for the field trip nor dedicate even more time to personally constructing a sampling of the online collection to display.<\/p>\n

Crowd sourcing knowledge can also go beyond vocabularies and prove especially useful in an archival context.[1]\u00a0 When limited information is known about a collection or object and those with institutional knowledge are unavailable (a persistent problem plaguing archives), another source of information is needed.\u00a0 The best way to do that is to tap those who would have the necessary expertise or experience.\u00a0 For example, Wellesley College’s archive began including digitized copies of unknown photographs from the archive in the monthly newsletters emailed to alumni.\u00a0 With those photos, the archive sent a request for any information that alums could provide.\u00a0 In this way, the archive has recovered a remarkable amount of knowledge about the historical happenings around college.<\/p>\n

But folksonomies and other crowd sourcing projects are only useful if institutions incorporate the generated knowledge into their records.\u00a0 Some gamify<\/a> the crowd sourcing process in order to engage users, but then lack the impetus to follow through in terms of incorporation.\u00a0 Dropping the ball in this way may be due in part to technical challenges of coordinating user input and the institution’s online platform.\u00a0 It may also stem from the same fear that many educators hold for Wikipedia: What if the information provided is WRONG?<\/em> Fortunately, both anecdotal and research evidence is proving those fears largely unfounded.[2]\u00a0 The instinct to participate with institutions in crowd sourcing is a self-selective process, requiring users to be quite motivated.\u00a0 Those interested in that level of participation are going to take the process seriously, since it does require mental engagement and the sacrifice of time.\u00a0 In terms of enthusiastic but incorrect contributions, institutions may rest assured that the communities that participates in crowd sourcing efforts are quite willing to self-police their fellows.\u00a0 If something is wrong or misapplied (eg Stephen Colbert’s Wikipedia antics<\/a>), another user with greater expertise will make the necessary alterations, or the institution can step in directly.<\/p>\n

GLAMs are experiencing an identity shift with the increased emphasis on outreach and engagement.[3]\u00a0 The traditional identity of a safeguarded knowledge repository no longer stands.\u00a0 GLAMs now represent knowledge networks with which users can engage.\u00a0 If obstacles exist to hinder that engagement, the institution loses its relevance and therefore its justification to both the bursar and the board.\u00a0 These open sourced projects can break down those perceived barriers between an institution and their public.\u00a0 Engaging with users at their varying levels and then using that input shows that the institution envisions itself as a member of that community rather than a looming, inflexible dictator of specific forms of knowledge.\u00a0 Beyond that, though, institutions can use all the help they can get.\u00a0 Like at Wellesley, an organization may be lacking in areas of knowledge, or they just don’t have the resources to deeply engage with all of their objects at a cataloguing or transcription level.\u00a0 Crowd sourcing not only engages users, but it also adds to an institution’s own understanding of its collections.\u00a0 By mining a community’s knowledge, everyone benefits.<\/p>\n