Chapter 8

Curation Platforms

Abstract levels of privacy or sharing. Most offer tagging and annotation features to enable searching and sharing. In chapter 8 of Library Technology Reports (vol. 50, Many also offer mobile apps to allow discovery and no. 7), “Social Media Curation,” the authors highlight sharing beyond the desktop or laptop. the various affordances of curation platforms by organiz- Because curation efforts in many of these spaces ing them in the following categories: real-time curation, continue to grow, it is worth noting that many users hybrid curation, digital content management systems and opt not to reinvent the wheel. They may use the efforts tools, news updates, learning playlists and dashboards, of another community member as a starting point or social bookmarking and note archiving, academic social share it as-is with their own communities. research, and media curation. This list is not exhaustive or comprehensive. It includes some of the popular tools mentioned in our uration platforms are multiplying in a way that interviews and on our survey. almost mirrors the information flood they were Note: Most of these platforms are available in both Cdesigned to remedy. They come in a variety of free and premium versions. We describe the free ver- flavors. sions. Premium versions offer additional features relat- Librarians tend to choose their curation platforms ing to branding, customization, privacy, and level of for a variety of reasons, including the affordances of participation. the platform, their comfort level with the tools, and Note also that, while we attempted to classify the concentration of community members inhabiting these tools for convenience, they tend to resist sorting October 2014 the space. and often offer features that would put them into more The librarians we spoke to used more than one than one of our categories. tool in their curation efforts. One tool might be used for collecting or staging content, perhaps as an in-box. Another might be used for search and discovery, as Real-Time Curation a source of current awareness. Yet another might be alatechsource.org used for publishing or sharing with a specific audience. These platforms rely on continual flow of real-time Nearly all of these platforms offer feeds, news, and socially generated content. or browser extensions to facilitate clipping, scooping, pinning, bookmarking, etc., when you are not actu- • Bundlr (http://bundlr.com), similar to Pinterest, ally on the platform. Most offer communities or net- allows users (clippers) to log in with , works and allow members to follow other members , or Google and create and share topic to facilitate discovery. Many allow for collaborative pages of photos, text clips, videos, tweets, code upkeep. Metrics provided by these sites allow librar- snippets, and documents. You may opt to find, fol- ies to monitor, track, and evaluate the effectiveness of low, and collaborate on the Bundles of friends and

Library Technology ReportsLibrary Technology their efforts. colleagues. Bundles are easily shared and embed- It is common for curation tools to allow for varying ded and may be resorted by date and view.

60 Social Media Curation Joyce Kasman Valenza, Brenda L. Boyer, and Della Curtis • Curata (www.curata.com), aimed at business, content. Scoop.it requires regular care and feed- allows users to “find, curate, share and analyze ing. Curators select and discard and may choose content on specific issues or topics in order to to annotate automatic scoop feeds managed by establish thought leadership, own industry con- keywords. Used as a search tool, Scoop.it allows versations and drive qualified web traffic.”1 a search or a browse of trending, featured, and • Digg (http://digg.com) sends users e-mails with a popular scoops. Though users can search without handful of top stories and videos as the Daily Digg. registration, registered users may follow topics • Flipboard (https://flipboard.com) allows users to they are interested in and suggest content to other combine articles, photos, videos, and music from curators. across the web to create attractive “glossy” maga- • Storify (http://storify.com) allows users to build zines with the FlipIt or app. The Flip- dynamic, coherent narratives, or social stories, board Editor (editor.flipboard.com) now offers a around aggregated social media content. Search dashboard for editing, rearranging, and sharing. for, drag and drop, and reorder relevant elements • Google+ Communities (https://plus.google.com/ from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Ins- communities) offers organized public or private tagram, and more, and add headlines, introduc- spaces for special interest communities to share tions, and text to any story. Easily edit or delete links and engage in discussion. elements and embed stories. • Paper.li (http://paper.li) is probably the easi- • Themeefy (http://themeefy.com) allows users to est strategy for creating a media-rich newspaper archive web content, as well as their own content, of tweets, feeds, and hashtags to deliver current and to publish their Themes as personalized maga- awareness content to a community. Curators har- zines that display as slideshows. Themeefy publi- vest content from Twitter usernames, Twitter cations may be linked to, bookmarked, followed, hashtags, Twitter lists, keywords on Facebook, and embedded. Twitter or Google+, RSS feeds, and Google+ • (http://tumblr.com) is a microblogging users. It is also beautifully searchable. The News- platform that allows users to pull together posts stand (http://paper.li/newsstand) allows you to using text, photos, quotes, links, music, and vid- discover papers and curators. Results are listed eos from a browser to share with the Tumblr by relevance, with number of views displayed as community. a metric of influence. If you are interested ina • TweetedTimes (http://tweetedtimes.com) allows paper, you may subscribe or embed your selected users to create real-time thematic newspapers by papers. aggregating news in Twitter streams and ranking • Pearltrees (www.pearltrees.com) offers a com- them by popularity among friends. munity for visually sharing resources, built on cre- ating networks (or trees) of interlinked pearls that display and burst open like interactive mind maps. Hybrid Curation Mouse over a pearltree to see its number of pearls TechnologyLibrary Reports and hits and the name of the curator or curation These platforms rely on both real-time feeds and cura- team. Trees may be linked to; shared on Facebook, tion of more static selected content. They offer more Twitter, and Google+; or embedded. Users may traditional archival, pathfinder, or learning manage- pearl by e-mail. The Pearler allows users to turn ment system approaches. web pages into pearls. • Pinterest (http://pinterest.com) allows users to • Blogs are commonly used as curation tools. Some organize and display visual content, or pins, as col- blogs serve as library home pages. Librarians use lections in the form of pin boards. Pinners gather blogs to share thematic content, annotated book- infographics, maps, photographs, and book cov- lists, and resource round-ups, and often include

ers. Pins, or the items shared on the boards, may widgets with media and newsfeeds. alatechsource.org be annotated. Hashtags added within annotations • edshelf (https://edshelf.com) allows users to cre- are searchable. Users may create collaborative ate virtual shelves from among its juried directory boards if they first follow each other. Pinterest of websites, mobile apps, and desktop programs. encourages its users to respect intellectual prop- Resources are rated, reviewed, and annotated by erty when pinning (http://pinterest.com/about/ parents and teachers. Users may embed their own copyright). Users create images using tools