Exploring Popularization and Crowdsourcing Opportunities in Digitized Collections

Speaker

Saga Jacksen (National Library of Finland)

Abstract

My presentation proposal concerns the material package tool developed by the National Library of Finland’s Finna services. I would introduce the background of the content package tool and discuss the opportunities it presents.

Finna.fi is a search service, which brings together materials from hundreds of different museums, archives, and libraries. While functioning as a traditional library platform, Finna also showcases hundreds of thousands of CC-licensed digital objects and archival materials from museums and archives. During the year 2023 Finna.fi had over 4 740 000 visiting users.

Within Finna, we have designed a material package tool that allows museums, archives, and libraries to curate digitized materials for educational use. The materials are linked to the official curriculum through the application programming interface (API) of the Finnish National Agency for Education. The development of the tool involved creating an entirely new metadata format (AIPA_LRMI). The tool operates on the Drupal platform, and through its form implementation, anyone can easily create curated material packages from the records available on Finna.fi. It is also possible to associate additional information and task ideas with the materials. Ultimately, these content packages become visible on Finna.fi.

In the future, we plan to expand the content package tool to a broader audience. We have been considering various ways to implement crowdsourcing of information. If different organizations, groups, or individual citizens would have access to the content package tool, it could enable the sharing and preservation of knowledge, everyday history and oral history in an entirely new way. The tool allows more versatile use of digital collections.

My presentation will focus on the content package tool and the emerging new possibilities. We want to share our organization’s experiences in this regard, but also hear ideas from other parties. Collaboration between organizations and individuals plays a significant role in this project!

If there have been more presentation proposals than needed, I would also be interested in the possibility of sharing presentation time with my colleague Riitta Peltonen, who has also applied to this conference.