Social GeoreferencingA Model for Libraries

By Glen Farrelly February 2014

About Me

• Doctoral candidate @ University of Toronto, Faculty of Information

• 15+ years as digital media consultant and web producer

• My dissertation examines how people’s use of locative media affects their spatial relationships

• For further Glen info glenfarrelly.com

Presentation Overview1. Introduction

2. Terminology3. Importance  4. Social georeferencing5. Examples

a. British Libraryb. OurOntarioc. Flickrd. LibraryThing

6. Caveats7. Recommendations

Sample of a libraries local studies collection

Introduction

• Location-based services (LBS) made geographically relevant info more accessible & desired

• Current ways to georeference are insufficient

• Online, crowdsourcing offers potential solution

Terminology

Geographic Info Retrieval

Importance of Topic

 

• People value geographically relevant information

• Long history of media used to deliver geo. relevance

• LBS have increased demand

• Much info in libraries not sufficiently georeferenced

Use of Location-Based Services

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

Find nearbybusinesses

Find nearbyevents

Find nearbysites

Viewpictures orvideos oflocation

Readcurrent infoof location

Read historyof location

Read localnews

Readreviews of

nearbybusinesses

% o

f re

spo

nd

ents

In a survey I did, 86% of respondents reported using their device to access at least one place-related function in the past month. The results are dated now, so I expect these rates to be higher. At the high end, 84% reported finding proximal businesses or services, reading local news (74%), finding nearby sites (67%), and reading information about their location (66%).

Social Georeferencing

• Users create information for georeferencing, via

o geotagging

o plotting on map

• Helps with toponym problems

• Collaborative and social

• Scalable

Examples…

• Asked public to georeference maps

• Used online tool (below) developed by Klokan (klokantech.com/georeferencer)

• In 7 weeks, 2700 maps completed

• More details:www.bl.uk/maps

British Library

• Collaborative project with libraries & museums across Ontario

• Assisted in digitizing and online cataloguing of local history collections

• Public contributed objects and comments on location & details of existing online items

• More info:http://ourontario.ca/

OurOntario

• Easy to use and familiar online tool to georeference location of photos via plotting on map

• Flickr also enables geotagging, i.e. folksonomy tags

• Geotags may better capture place-name info seekingbehaviour of people

• Visit map:flickr.com/photos/glenfarrelly/map

Flickr Map

• LibraryThing is example of easy-to-use, social toolpeople use to describe, tag, and share info

• Projects have successfully combined LibraryThing’s user-generated content with library catalogues

• Model of way to combine social georeferencing with library catalogues

• librarything.com

LibraryThing

Caveats

• Quality and accuracy of public’s work

• Malicious hijacking

• Exploitation of free labour

• Creating and managing an online, collaborative system is time-consuming

• Maintaining public (and internal) interest in project

Encouraging Participation• Offer incentives and prizes

• Reward “super users”

• Give credit for contributions

• Promote with social media

• Engaging user experience (incl. gamification)

Read: Holley, R. (2010). Crowdsourcing: How and why should libraries do it? D-Lib Magazine, 16(3/4).

delicious.com/glenfarrelly/HHLIB

glenfarrelly.blogspot.ca

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