Joyce Kasman Valenza - Social Media Curation

Library Technology Reports

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Volume 50, Number 7

Social Media Curation

ISBNs: (print) 978-0-8389-5938-1; (PDF) 978-0-8389-5939-8; (ePub) 978-0-8389-5940-4; (Kindle) 978-0-8389-5941-1.

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Copyright 2014 Joyce Kasman Valenza, Brenda L. Boyer, and Della Curtis

All Rights Reserved.

About the Authors

Joyce Kasman Valenza is assistant professor at Rutgers University School of Communication and Information, where she teaches courses in school library management and social media and is director of the MLS program. She has worked as a special, public, and school librarian. She earned her doctoral degree in information science from the University of North Texas in 2007. Joyce currently writes the NeverEnding Search blog for School Library Journal and also writes VOYAs Tag Team Tech column. She is active in ALA, AASL, YALSA, and ISTE and speaks internationally about issues relating to libraries and thoughtful use of educational technology. Joyce considers herself a mother and founder of the TL Geek tribe, #tlchat, and the TL Virtual Cafe.

Brenda L. Boyer is chair of the Information and Technology Resources department for the Kutztown Area School District (PA), where she also serves as the high school librarian. She teaches information fluency and research skills in brick-and-mortar and online settings. Brenda has taught graduate LIS courses as an adjunct at Kutztown University (PA). She is active in AASL, ISTE, AECT, and iNACOL. Besides social media curation, her research interests include embedded librarianship, inquiry models, and online learning. Brenda is completing her PhD in instructional design for online learning at Capella University.

Della Curtis retired in 2013 as coordinator of the Office of Library Information Services, Baltimore County Public Schools (MD), where she provided district leadership in library information and information technologies for 169 PreK12 school library media programs. She is responsible for implementing online information technologies in Maryland public schools in 1989 that launched the concept of libraries without walls. She earned her MS in instructional technology/school library media from Towson University in 1989. She taught graduate courses for 22 years at Towson University, College of Education, Department of Educational Technology and Literacy.

Abstract

Librarians have always curated. Today, as human filters, librarians address the proverbial Internet fire hose. This issue of Library Technology Reports (vol. 50, no. 7), Social Media Curation, considers curation as it is popularly applied to activities that leverage the power of social media to collect, organize, share, and interpret content to tell a digital story for a specific audience. It provides a snapshot of the state of digital curation using social media across libraryland and shares ideas from a few social media curation thought leaders slightly beyond the library community. It presents new models for practitioners. And it offers a springboard from which further exploration of these efforts can emerge and be studied.

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Contents

Chapter 1

Abstract

In chapter 1 of Library Technology Reports (vol. 50, no. 7), Social Media Curation, the authors explore current definitions of the word curation inside and outside the library community and identify the practice of social media curation. The chapter shares professional rationale and offers an overview of current practice.

Curator: One who has the care or charge of a person or thing.

OED

First things firstcuration is a terrible term. It has been used so frivolously and applied so indiscriminately that its become vacant of meaning. But I firmly believe that the ethos at its corea drive to find the interesting, meaningful, and relevant amidst the vast maze of overabundant information, creating a framework for what matters in the world and whyis an increasingly valuable form of creative and intellectual labor, a form of authorship that warrants thought.

Maria Popova

Librarians have always curated. Today, as human filters, librarians address the proverbial Internet fire hose. With the added intensity of user-generated content, they direct the stream, offering context, pointing to value and authority, while protecting their communities, students, faculty, employees, and researchers from oversaturation.

Like Maria Popova, we are acutely aware that the term curation is loaded and that our profession includes curators who work in a variety of ways. We represent folks intensely serious about curation as a time-honored professional activity. We represent the growing number of professionals engaged in digital research data curation and digital curation of artifacts on huge national and international library portals. We also represent other professionals who leverage social media tools for immediate sharing and continual communication with their communities.

A segment of the library world curates with protocols and policies and serious and worthy concern for the quality of the content they select, for its authority and provenance, for the metadata with which they tag and increase accessibility and discoverability, and for the stories they tell with their selected items, artifacts, and media. Traditionally, offline, museum curators and archivists collect and carefully research, authenticate, and catalog art and artifacts. They select items for display. They sequence, assemble, organize, and present. They interpret their collections, offering their visitors context, and perhaps a story or experience, through descriptions they share on placards and plates and audio tours.