I have been exploring differences between crowds and communities with attention to motivation to contribute, highlighting the role of coorientation to larger ideas -- e.g., public access, open source, science, etc. These papers are available online and will lead to further references (comments welcome! this effort is still a work in progress): Haythornthwaite, C. (Jan. 2009). Crowds and communities: Light and heavyweight models of peer production. Proceedings of the 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society. [http//hdl.handle.net/2142/9457] Haythornthwaite, C. (in press). Online knowledge crowds and communities. In Knowledge Communities. Reno, NV: Center for Basque Studies. [http://hdl.handle.net/2142/14198] Elsewhere, look also for VGI -- voluntary geographic information. Goodchild, M.F. (2007). Citizens as sensors: the world of volunteered geography. GeoJournal, 69, 211-221. Haklay, M., and Weber, P. (2008). OpenStreetMap--User-Generated Street Map. IEEE Pervasive Computing, 7(4), 12-18. Nama Budhathoki (doc student at UIUC) is in the midst of a study of motivations for VGI. Earlier papers include: Budhathoki, N.R., Bruce, B.C., and Nedovic-Budic, Z. (2008). Reconceptualizing the role of the user of spatial data infrastructure, GeoJournal, 72(3-4), 149-160. And, an earlier paper from a special issue in JCMC that asked about motivations. Holohan, A., and Garg, A. (2005). Collaboration online: The example of Distributed Computing. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 10(4), article 16. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue4/holohan.html -------------------------------------- Caroline Haythornthwaite Leverhulme Visiting Professor, Institute of Education, University of London (2009-10) Professor, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 501 East Daniel St., Champaign IL 61820 (haythorn@illinois.edu)