Rose Holley, Manager of Trove, National Library of Australia
Crowdsourcing Strategies: outline of research findings into strategies libraries and archives do and should employ in order to maximise the effectiveness of ‘crowdsourcing’.
- Rose gave an account of how and where crowdsourcing has been used to add value to information assets, including: Australian newspapers; FamilySearch indexing; PictureAustralia; GalaxyZoo.
- For example: http://www.galaxyzoo.org/
- Galaxy Zoo: Hubble uses gorgeous imagery of hundreds of thousands of galaxies drawn from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope archive.
- To understand how these galaxies, and our own, formed we need your help to classify them according to their shapes — a task at which your brain is better than even the most advanced computer.
- If you’re quick, you may even be the first person in history to see each of the galaxies you’re asked to classify.
- More than 250,000 people have taken part in Galaxy Zoo so far, producing a wealth of valuable data and sending telescopes on Earth and in space chasing after their discoveries.
- The images used in Galaxy Zoo: Hubble are more detailed and beautiful than ever, and will allow us to look deeper into the Universe than ever before.
- To begin exploring, click the ‘How To Take Part’ link above, or read The Story So Far to find out what Galaxy Zoo has achieved to date.”
Sebastian Chan, a/g Head of Digital, Social and Emerging Technologies, Powerhouse Museum
Case study: How organisations employ Web 2.0 technologies to provide value added services. A look at how the Powerhouse Museum has employed Web 2.0 technologies in delivering a range of public services.
- Digital principles: findable; understandable; shareable; usable; meaningful; responsive; available
- Circle of access: analogue in-house; digital in-house; online; online in the network.
- Models of packaging content: original; digital original; digital curator; digital branding; product bundle.
- PH sees themselves as media industry. Competitive attention seeker in the digital arena.
- The past should be used as a valuable resource for the making decisions for the future.
- Putting information where people look for the information – not expecting people to come to you. For example PH on DigitalNZ: http://www.digitalnz.org/ and Flickr
- Different environments have different communities of use – eg tagged articulated skeleton on Flickr. See: http://www.flickr.com/photos/powerhouse_museum/2980051095/
Ben Searle, General Manager, Australian Government Office of Spatial Data Management
Making public sector information available and the barriers to its release and the efforts being made by agencies in relation to public sector information, and the issues faced.
- Spatial data access and pricing policy – a Cabinet decision resulted in 1500 data sets accessible at no cost
- Barriers to accessing public sector information:
- Technical and resources: most government data is structured for the BIS not for public use; privacy issues; security issues; agencies are resourced for core functions and not to de-classify and/or aggregate data
- Emotional: eg – “data cannot be released for privacy” – but data can be aggregated to remove identification of individuals; “data cannot be released due to security reasons” – data is often over classified; “the data may embarrass the Minister” – against open gov agenda; “the information me be misused” – legal actions may result but no legal action has been taken to date; “I want to hold onto my database” – information is power; “people will learn I have poor data management practices” – I might be revealed and embarrassed; “I gain my identity through my data” – I might lose my identity.
- Lack of clarity on how to release data (difficult for users); lack of clarity on what agency is the custodian; multiple IP and licencing; inconsistency on data discovery and access approaches; lack on incentive to make data publicly available; lack of requirements to return data collected with Commonwealth funds to the funding agency
- How to reduce the barriers: have policy around data collection (data should come back; metadata etc); custodian guidelines; have discovery, access and licencing protocols; governance and administration (agency roles and responsibility to make data accessible); funding models.
- Conclusion: a small amount of coordination and a change in culture will help increase access to public sector information; the Information Commissioner will be driving this agenda but all agencies need to work together to remove the barriers.
Dr. Tim Sherratt, National Museum of Australia, Adjunct Associate-Professor, Digital Design & Media Arts Research Cluster, Faculty of Arts and Design, University of Canberra.
How organisations employ Web 2.0 technologies to provide value-added services.
Development of ‘Mapping our Anzacs’ project and beyond. How we can now re-use archival data.
Professor Anne Fitzgerald, Law Faculty, Queensland University of Technology
Copyright Law and intellectual property in a Gov 2.0 environment. Discussion on the impact that copyright and intellectual property constraints have on access to, and use and re-use of, government information in a Gov 2.0 environment.
- Copyright licensing vs “no rights” approach
- Advantages of copyright-based open licensing approach for government:
- open licensing mirrors the fundamental justification for recognising copyright in government material
- supports government’s open access policy objectives
- provenance and attribution
- avoids financial and technical lock-up of taxpayer funded materials
- Advantages of using CreativeCommons
- enforceability of licence
- explicit statement of re-use rights
- clear statement that information is sourced from government (attribution/provenance) – increased user confidence
- universal recognition of CC symbols
- discoverability of digital objects
- enables legal remix and mashup
See: http://creativecommons.org.au
NAA / CAARA Residential 8-12 November 2010 