User-Contributed Descriptive Metadata for Libraries and Cultural Institutions

The Library of Congress and other cultural institutions are collecting highly informative user-contributed metadata as comments and notes expressing historical and factual information not previously identified with a resource. In this observational study we find a number of valuable annotations added to sets of images posted by the Library of Congress on the Flickr Commons. We propose a classification scheme to manage contributions and mitigate information overload issues. Implications for information retrieval and search are discussed. Additionally, the limits of a “collection” are becoming blurred as connections are being built via hyperlinks to related resources outside of the library collection, such as Wikipedia and locally relevant websites. Ideas are suggested for future projects, including interface design and institutional use of user-contributed information.