An Introduction to Involving Users

Many libraries, archives, and museums provide their users with social computing environments that include the ability to tag collections, annotate objects, and otherwise contribute their thoughts to the knowledge base of the institution. Information professionals have responded to the world of user-created content by developing open source tools to coordinate these activities and researching the best ways to involve users in the co-creation of digital knowledge.

This rapid influx of new technologies and new methods for interacting with users comes at a time when libraries, archives, and museums still struggle to share data across their own institutions, let alone between institutions of different types. Information professionals had barely begun to make progress developing crosswalks and data interoperability standards when, as social computing became the norm on the Web, providing the ability for users to manipulate data changed from a cool toy to a basic expectation. Moving forward—and keeping pace with user expectations—requires the coordination of many different users (in all their variety) as they contribute, participate, shape, and create all types of data in all types of contexts.

This issue of Library Trends offers the chance to consider what social computing means for the future of libraries, archives, and museums, and to think carefully about the future trends and long-term implications of involving users in the co-construction of knowledge online. The authors of the following articles have thought broadly about the issues raised when we bring users into the mix in various ways and at various points in the information life cycle. Their efforts contribute to ongoing broad-based discussions about what happens when users are involved in shaping, guiding, and directing the development of online libraries, archives, and museums and their information resources.

Martens's article on approaching the anti-collection, for instance, offers a unique look at collections as boundary objects, contrasting the core collections of libraries, archives, and museums with "the set of all publications not held in the local collection"—the anti-collection. Her discussion takes her through case studies exploring what happens when users help co-construct new knowledge—covering such examples as fanfiction archives, arXiv, wikileaks, and Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) databases—while her analysis details the similarities and differences between different types of collecting activities.

Feinberg's discussion of personal expressive bibliographies continues this conversation by exploring what happens when libraries, archives, and museums encourage their visitors to create their own personal collections of items of interest selected from the institution's holdings. Drawing upon Umberto Eco's notion of the "poetic list," she contrasts the "expressive potential of the poetic collection with traditional descriptive goals of libraries, archives, and museums," and explores how information organizations can benefit from engaging users in the interpretation of their collections.

Bastian, Cloonan, and Harvey's discussion of digital stewardship pedagogy explores how an education that offers opportunities for experimentation and innovation can "affect the ability of practitioners to interact with users, as well as how users can become involved with and integrated into the construction of digital stewardship activities." Using the Digital Curriculum Laboratory at Simmons College as a case study, the authors explore the significance of incorporating digital stewardship in the library and information science (LIS) curriculum and reflect on the value of experimental learning when preparing students for careers in digital curation or stewardship.

Galloway continues this theme by examining how an ongoing collaboration between the Goodwill Computer Museum and the School of Information at the University of Texas provides a "laboratory setting for the participation of academic researchers in the field of digital heritage preservation." Her discussion and analysis of the phenomenon of retrocomputing and how users from different backgrounds can contribute their expertise to help document the history of computing has direct implications for academic and nonacademic communities seeking to work together to preserve the future of digital heritage.

Copeland and Barreau's article on how public libraries can help people to manage and share their digital information presents a detailed framework for co-created community repositories that addresses "the social, legal, and technical aspects...