We've done some work around the concept of "curators" in social file-sharing services. You can find slides from our presentation at ECSCW 2009 on slideshare.net (look for "information curators in an enterprise file-sharing service"). And you can find the short paper from that conference at www.research.ibm.com/cambridge, then click on "papers" and search for the same title. I know of two other groups that have looked at some of these concepts: Phoebe Sengers and colleagues at Cornell, and Sophia Liu at University of Colorado Boulder. --michael ----- Michael Muller Research staff member and IBM master inventor IBM Research One Rogers Street, Cambridge, MA, USA 02142 michael_muller@us.ibm.com +1 617 693 4235 www.research.ibm.com/cambridge on twitter: michael_muller From: Matthew Bernius <mbernius@gmail.com> To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Date: 10/24/2010 04:37 PM Subject: Re: [Air-L] Looking for examples of aggregation communities Sent by: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org Two thoughts... Historically, there is some similarities with the Oxford English Dictionaries. Essentially contributors serve as first round editors, collecting and aggregating the earliest known usages of each word. Of course, this is still a hierarchical organization and traditionally I don't think it was much of a "community" -- still it might be a useful reference. Fictionally, you might want to look at the second part of Cory Doctorow's "Makers" which revolve around theme park/museums that are curated by people who ride them. - Matt Message: 2 Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2010 22:03:54 -0400 From: Derek Hansen <shakmatt@gmail.com> To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: [Air-L] Looking for examples of aggregation communities Message-ID: <AANLkTik9YJ1_bizCZs3sWi=qVf3= -gzFtgg3rLVcwO4A@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Colleagues, I'm looking for some examples of communities of volunteers that help amalgamate a collection of materials rather than create them. The example we are examining is the Encyclopedia of Life, which aggregates data from many different scientific databases (and user-generated content such as Flickr images) into a coherent whole. The participants are called "curators" and their main role is to validate and approve content rather than create it. They also do a lot of work to integrate the original content into a coherent whole. What similar examples exist on the web today? What examples have existed for decades or centuries? Thanks ahead of time for any examples or thoughts. Derek Hansen Assistant Professor iSchool University of Maryland ----------------------------- Matthew Bernius PhD Student | Cultural Anthropology | Cornell University | http://www.arts.cornell.edu/anthro/ Researcher At Large | Open Publishing Lab @ the Rochester Institute of Technology | http://opl.cias.rit.edu | @ritopl mBernius@gMail.com | http://www.waking-dream.com | @mattBernius _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/