From repository to Wunderkammer: user participation on Europeana

Developing new user scenarios for multilingual user-generated content
Chair: Jill Cousins

Should Europeana bring in people's own content?

How can people contribute to metadata descriptions?

How would tagging work?

What will the user need to do? How will they behave?

What are their expectations?

What features will they need to carry out their task?

User-generated content and input will be one of Europeana's critical success factors. In this workshop we'll outline some of the key issues around bringing this content on board, including

• Management of the user generated data in relation to the cultural heritage institutions
• How to ensure content is appropriate and authentic
• The IPR of the user generated content and input

The session will start with a couple of case studies including Open Images and Waisda. Johan Oomen will talk about how these projects went about mobilising audience engagement. Johan's experience of developing the user scenarios will help us focus an interactive session in which participants help us map

• the expectations users will have when they add content to Europeana
• the best ways to break down the language barriers
• the features of the interface
• how user content sits alongside curator content

Jill Cousins of Europeana will then facilitate a session with participants developing user scenarios for implementation by Europeana.eu.

 
If you have expertise in user scenarios, this will be a great opportunity to guide Europeana's development. If you're a user with ideas, this is a forum that will value your views. If you're interested in how user scenarios are developed - join the workshop and pick up on new ideas.

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Jill Cousins is the Executive Director of the EDL Foundation, responsible for Europeana.eu and the Programme Director for The European Library.  She has many years experience in web publishing, which are now being applied to the libraries and the cultural heritage arenas.  Her past experience includes the commercial publishing world as European Business Development Director of VNU New Media and scholarly publishing with Blackwell Publishing running their online journals service.  Prior to publishing she had a variety of marketing and research careers in the information field.  These ranged from being the Marketing and Event Director for Learned Information (Online Information) to managing her own research company, First Contact.  All of which is very deviant from her first career as a Middle Eastern Map Researcher for the Ministry of Defense.  Jill holds a Ph.D in Geography on Sixteenth Century Arabic and Turkish Sea-charts.

Anra Kennedy is Head of Programmes at Culture24 and responsible for the development and delivery of their publishing strategy and portfolio of sites. She has overseen the specification, data structuring, taxonomy and UID of their new site www.culture24.org.uk and has led the thinking behind their award winning site for children www.show.me.uk and the new Caboodle project www.caboodle.org.uk 
A qualified teacher and journalist, with a degree in English Literature & American Studies and PGC in Museum Studies, Anra taught in primary schools in England and Greece for several years before joining Culture24 in 2001. She's created a range of web and gallery-based educational resources in the commercial and non-profit sectors. Anra is a founding trustee of the Kids in Museums charity and a judge of the Guardian's annual Family Friendly Museum Awards.

Drs. Johan Oomen is head of the R&D Department of the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision and Phd candidate at the VU University Amsterdam. The R&D department is part of the Images for the Future project bureau. Images for the Future is the largest digitization project in Europe to date. For the R&D department Johan mainly works on externally funded research projects, notably the FP7 programme and ICT PCP programme. His research projects focus on providing access to digital heritage via networks. Johan holds a BA in Information Science and an MA in Media Studies. Within the framework of his Phd research at the VU University Amsterdam Oomen works on the NWO funded AGORA project. Johan is a member of the Webstroom expert group, centered around the use of streaming media in higher education. This expert group is funded by the SURF Foundation and General Secretary of the international DIVERSE network. Oomen worked for the British Universities Film and Video Council (London) and RTL Nederland. Johan gives presentations on his work and research at conferences and publishes regularly in journals including Ariadne, Innovate and Information Professional.