Not strictly library-related, but here’s a little tidbit, just for fun ….
“steve” is the Art Museum Social Tagging Project. A “collaborative research project exploring the potential for user-generated descriptions of the subjects of works of art”, its aim is to improve access to museum collections and encourage engagement with cultural content. Participation is open to anyone with a contribution to make to developing collective knowledge, regardless of whether they work in a museum. From their “About” page ….
“Together, working within steve, we hope to learn more about how to improve access to museum collections. We’ve realized that what people remember about a work of art often isn’t described in museum collections documentation, and are aware that the vocabulary of museum professionals (curators and registrars) isn’t always that of the general public. We want to explore user-contributed terminology, collected on the Web, as a way to address these gaps. User-created descriptions could provide museums with missing subject-based information for their collections databases and make our on-line resources more useful.”
The project originally started in small part due to cost; professional specialist cataloguing can prove to be prohibitive to the budgets of small museums. However, the originators of the project recognized that people see different things. By allowing users to describe the collections in their own words, it may open them up to others.I also can’t help but think that maybe the project itself can be viewed as a form of art – a commentary on access to individual understanding by way of social collaboration. Any thoughts?
