“Curation is about adding value from humans who add their qualitative judgment to whatever is being gathered and organized” (Rosenbaum, 2011).

Curation gives users of the Internet the capability to control the flow of information that they receive and to cipher the most relevant information to read, watch or listen to. With many different flows of information being used to create healthy information ecologies, this essay will present a variety of these information flows that past researchers have examined to determine the best way to curate information for distribution among information ecologies. This essay will attempt to answer the question of what role curation plays in creating and maintaining a web presence.

What are information ecologies? According to Bonnie Nardi and Vicki O’Day, they  “define an information ecology to be a system of people, practices, values, and technologies in a particular local environment. [… They are] human activities that are served by technology ” (Nardi & O’Day, 1999). Information ecologies are a network of humans who gather in one place online to help one another. “Information ecology influences what information is produced and stored, what information is made available and to whom, and what information is required and valued in task performance. [They attempt] to emphasize people rather than technology within networked information and communication systems” (Malhotra, 2002).

Nardi and O’Day list several key characteristics that create a healthy information ecology,

“An information ecology is a complex system of parts and relationships. It exhibits diversity and experiences continual evolution. Different parts of an ecology coevolve, changing together according to the relationships in the system. Several keystone species necessary to the survival of the ecology are present. Information ecologies have a sense of locality” (Nardi & O’Day, 1999).

To maintain a healthy information ecology, it is important to change the flow of information direction and quality to keep the information ecology content relevant. “[The] flow of some new interests or ideas produces new collaborative networks and communities” (Naghshineh & Zardary, 2011). “Technology change will improve the information environment” (Malhotra, 2002). Dr. Yogesh Malhotra says that information is not “data” and it can’t be easily stored. A healthy information ecology helps people to create, to distribute, to understand and to use information in a simplistic information model (Malhotra, 2002).

An example of a healthy information ecology would be the use of Facebook groups for Web309 students. This group uses the Facebook technology to create a closed group of users who can gather together online to generate ideas, share thoughts, links and opinions, help each other out with issues relating to Web309, and a place to have friendly conversations with other students who are undertaking the unit. Because this group is closed to the general public, it eliminates the noise from other users who do not share similar interests in the topic the group has been created for, which keeps the flow of information relevant to the users within the group.

In Clay Shirky keynote presentation at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York in 2008, he states, “Thinking about information overload isn’t actually describing the problem and thinking about filter failure is.” (Shirky, 2008). He explains how information overload is not a new thing. We have been confronted with this issue for years.

He uses the example of when the Guttenberg moveable type press was introduced in the 1500s. It made information reproduction relative cheap to publish and distribute to the masses. To resolve the problem of the information overload and to control the quality of the printed word, those who printed the books also became the publishers who controlled the quality of the information being published (Shirky, 2008). This indeed was one of the first jobs of a curator. These publishers could control what information was distributed to the information ecology.

As Shirky continues he states how in Guttenburg days, it cost a lot of money upfront to produce and distribute information. But since the introduction of the internet, “the cost of producing anything by anyone has fallen through the floor, famously, and as a result there is no economic logic that says that you have to filter for quality before you publish” (Shirky, 2008). So the job for the users of the Internet seems to be that we must create our own filtering systems so that we can control the quality of information we receive. Shirky uses the example of SPAM filters. Systems are set up to delete unnecessary email so we don’t have to deal with what’s not important. But even then these systems fail and we need to manually curate the information that does filter through to our inboxes. We need to constantly update the systems we have in place to maintain an appropriate filter for future SPAM as the environment is constantly changing (Shirky, 2008).

Shirky has explained the role of a content curator and what their task is in maintaining a healthy information ecology by using the SPAM filters as an example. The content curators sole task is to create a flow of information that is relevant for its information ecology. “Information flow, intuitively, is the movement of information objects from point of origin to ‘target’ use” (Zhu, Wang, & Chang, 2009). The following paragraphs explain examples of information flow models. Researches in the field of content curation have devised sets of working frameworks for curating information for information ecologies.

Firstly lets review Rohit Bhargava 5 models of content curation. Bhargava is a global marketing expert whose 5 models of content curation include aggregation, distillation, elevation, mashup, and chronology. Aggreation is “the act of curating the most relevant information about a particular topic into a single location” (Bhargava, 2010). Samples of this type of content curation would be experts curating blogs that list links to other useful websites that are available about a topic, for example free Photoshop brushes. This type of curation takes the time away for other users who are looking for websites that have free Photoshop brushes that they can use for themselves. Distillation is “the act of curating information into a more simplistic format where only the most important or relevant ideas are shared” (Bhargava, 2010). This type of curation may lose some relevant information due to its simplicity, but users are presented with a more focused point of view on the information that they desire. “Elevation refers to curation with a mission of identifying a larger trend or insight from smaller daily musings posted online” (Bhargava, 2010). This type of curation is used in micro blogging platforms, such as Twitter, where posters would share links with followers on particular topics and websites they discover along their journey through the Internet. “Mashups are unique curated justapositions where merging existing content is used to create a new point of view” (Bhargava, 2010). This form of curation takes multiple points of views and shares it in one location. It also offers online curators a way to create something new by building upon existing content available on a topic. Wikipedia is an excellent example of how content curators gather information from multiple places to describe or explain a topic in one place. Lastly, Bhargava fifth curation model is chronology. It is “a form of curation that brings together historical information organized based on time to show an evolving understanding of a particular topic” (Bhargava, 2010). Creating a historical timeline on an event such as World War II would be an example of this type of curation.

Dengya Zhu and Heniz Dreher presented a paper at the 2008 IEEE International Conference on Digital Ecosystems and Technologies, held at Curtin University, on Personal Information Retrieval in Digital Ecosystems. Digital Ecosystems are “an open, loosely coupled, domain clustered, demand-driven, self-organising agent environment, where each agent of each species is proactive and responsive regarding its own benefits/profits but is also responsible to its system” (Boley & Chang, 2007). With this definition in mind, Zhu and Dreher suggest an information retrieval framework that “combines search results from the intranet, commercial databases, and the Internet to satisfy the information needs of digital ecosystems’ users by providing comprehensive and accurate search results” (Zhu & Dreher, 2009). Mining information about the user who is accessing the information by using personalised search algorithms that learn users search preferences and interests, the results are refined and will be more relevant for the users personal needs (Zhu & Dreher, 2008). With this framework for information flow in mind, Google+ have adopted many aspects of this idea on how they collect users information through Google online services (ie Google Search, Youtube) and relating them back to Google+ profiles. This helps users who log into Google+ to keep their user preferences when searching the web from other devices. Curators need to keep in mind that the web is becoming more personal and when creating curated content they need to curate to a targeted persona.

Next lets look at Thomas Davenport and Laurence Prusak’s information ecology framework. They define “information ecology as a holistic management of information” (Zhu & Dreher, 2009). According to their research, there are four key attributes including integration, recognition of change, observation and behaviour. “Information ecologies thrive on information diversity” (Davenport & Prusak, 1997). Information integration can to some degree be captured through computer systems, but true information integration won’t happen without content curators making changes to its organisational structure. It’s up to curators to package the information into a format that engages the information consumers (Davenport & Prusak, 1997). Information ecologies need to remain flexible to accommodate for technological and environmental change. “Information management must allow for change – even if it’s not clear exactly what that change will be” (Davenport & Prusak, 1997). Curators need to be more descriptive in their approaches in information curation, and observe the existing information environment. “Describing who has what information, the various sources of information support, how information and knowledge are used in work processes, and the organization’s intentions and objectives for information is an essential, if sometimes overwhelming, task” (Davenport & Prusak, 1997). Focusing on the behaviour of people within an information ecology means not to simply provide information to them, but to facilitate its effective use (Davenport & Prusak, 1997). Knowing how the inhabitants of the information ecology seek, share and make sense of the information provided helps curators to provide more relevant information and deliver it in a format that can be understood by its receiver. By integrating diverse types of information, recognising change, describing and observing existing information, and focusing on people and information behaviours, a healthy information ecology can be founded (Davenport & Prusak, 1997).

The role of the curator in creating and maintaining an online presence is fairly simple, to keep the most currant and up-to-date information available to their information ecology. Once the content within the information ecology becomes dated or irrelevant the curator needs to adapt their flow of information. Otherwise their environment becomes unhealthy and may be replaced with another information ecology that provides the inhabitants with the information they require. Bhargava, Zhu and Dreher, and Davenport and Prusak have provided some framework examples of how to insure the flow of content to information ecology can remain relevant. The echoing theme between the three examples provided is recognising the need for change and adapting the flow to keep the information relevant.

REFERENCES

Bhargava, R. (2010). The 5 Models of Content Curation http://www.rohitbhargava.com/2011/03/the-5-models-of-content-curation.html

Boley, H., & Chang, E. (2007). Digital Ecosystems: Principles and Sematics. Paper presented at the Inaugural IEEE Digital Ecosystems and Technology Conference.

Davenport, T., & Prusak, L. (1997). The Best of All Worls: Information Ecology Information Ecology: Hosted by the ‘Tong Master’ Pete Mitcham. Includes BBQ dinner & Beers. New York: Oxford University Press (US).

Malhotra, Y. (2002). Information Ecology and Knowledge Management: Toward Knowledge Ecology for Hypertubulent Organizational Environments. Management, 3.

Naghshineh, N., & Zardary, S. (2011). Information ecology as a mind tool for repurposing of educational social networks. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 15, 3640-3643.

Nardi, B., & O’Day, V. (1999). Information Ecologies: Using Technology with Heart. First Monday, 4(5).

Rosenbaum, S. (2011). Curation: What is it? Curation Nation : How to Win in a World Where Consumers are Creators (pp. 1-22). New York: McGraw Hill.

Shirky, C. (2008). It’s Not Information Overload. It’s Filter Failure. Paper presented at the Web 2.0 Expo, New York.

Zhu, D., & Dreher, H. (2008). Personalized Information Retrieval in Digial Ecosystems. Paper presented at the 2008 Second IEEE International Conference on Digital Ecosystems and Technologies.

Zhu, D., Wang, H., & Chang, E. (2009). Information Ecological Imbalance and Information Intervention Policies in Digital Ecosystems. Paper presented at the 2009 3rd IEEE International Conference on Digital Ecosystems and Technologies.