As part of my PhD research I’m currently building scripts that monitor social media sites such as Flickr, Facebook and Twitter. Monitoring those sites will give me insight in the usage by museums and see which capitals (social, cultural, economical or strategic) they address.
The first step for me is to analyze the content of Flickr the Commons.
The key goals of The Commons on Flickr are to firstly show you hidden treasures in the world’s public photography archives, and secondly to show how your input and knowledge can help make these collections even richer.
You’re invited to help describe the photographs you discover in The Commons on Flickr, either by adding tags or leaving comments. (http://www.flickr.com/commons/)
In total 56 institutes are participating and uploaded 188,772 photos to the commons. The distribution however is not symmetrical. The Imperial War Museum shared 10 photos whilst the San Diego Air & Space Museum Archives shares a total fo 107,130 photos. Nevertheless the amount of photos and the amount of ‘possible’ interaction with the community is huge.
Today I will share the amount of photos per institute and next week I will update by showing the amount of tags and (hopefully) comments per institute.
| Institute | Photo amount |
| San Diego Air & Space Museum Archives | 107130 |
| The Library of Congress | 14211 |
| The U.S. National Archives | 8067 |
| Biblioteca de Arte-Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian | 7289 |
| The National Archives UK | 5285 |
| Brooklyn Museum | 4934 |
| Cornell University Library | 3980 |
| OSU Special Collections & Archives | 2539 |
| New York Public Library | 2537 |
| Bibliothèque de Toulouse | 2415 |
| National Library of Scotland | 2302 |
| Smithsonian Institution | 2273 |
| Powerhouse Museum Collection | 1923 |
| The Field Museum Library | 1688 |
| Keene and Cheshire County (NH) Historical Photos | 1595 |
| Nationaal Archief | 1464 |
| LSE Library | 1390 |
| State Library of New South Wales collection | 1325 |
| State Library and Archives of Florida | 1323 |
| State Library of Queensland, Australia | 1223 |
| George Eastman House | 1058 |
| Swedish National Heritage Board | 880 |
| National Maritime Museum | 799 |
| LlGC ~ NLW | 762 |
| Bergen Public Library | 710 |
| The Library of Virginia | 681 |
| Center for Jewish History, NYC | 681 |
| SMU Central University Libraries | 668 |
| National Library NZ on The Commons | 666 |
| Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library Archives | 626 |
| Museum of Photographic Arts Collections | 586 |
| National Library of Ireland on The Commons | 504 |
| Musée McCord Museum | 475 |
| Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums | 403 |
| Fylkesarkivet i Sogn og Fjordane | 383 |
| Riksarkivet (National Archives of Norway) | 349 |
| NASA on The Commons | 347 |
| National Library of Australia Commons | 308 |
| Galt Museum & Archives on The Commons | 280 |
| Texas State Archives | 278 |
| Australian National Maritime Museum on The Commons | 269 |
| UA Archives | Upper Arlington History | 246 |
| Museum of Hartlepool | 244 |
| nha.library | 241 |
| DC Public Library Commons | 201 |
| Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest | 201 |
| UW Digital Collections | 201 |
| National Media Museum | 188 |
| Australian War Memorial collection | 131 |
| National Galleries of Scotland Commons | 109 |
| The Royal Library, Denmark | 105 |
| Stockholm Transport Museum Commons | 102 |
| JWA Commons | 82 |
| Getty Research Institute | 73 |
| Ljósmyndasafn Reykjavíkur / Reykjavík Museum of | 32 |
| Imperial War Museum Collections | 10 |
| total | 188772 |
The purpose of this research project was to examine the ways in which social tagging could be deployed as a tool to enrich collections, improve their accessibility and to increase visitor group involvement. The museums’ guiding question for the project was: ‘when is it useful to deploy social tagging as a tool for the benefit of museums and what kind of effects can be expected from such deployment?’
Tags and stories where gathered by a prototype tagging tool called ikweetwatditis.nl (I Know What This Is). In our research we made a distinction between laymen and experts. We believe it might be more useful for a museum to have social tagging tools aimed at a specific group instead of a broad audience. This is based on the assumption that social tagging contributions differ from those by experts. This assumptions was the basis for the research question: do laymen tag in different ways compared to experts?
In this report we will discuss the following hypotheses:
This game kept me busy for hours and hours and I enjoyed it to the fullest! To hear that Valve released the game soundtrack for free is music to my ears. Download the soundtrack and if you haven’t already… buy this wonderful game!
