Using Web 2.0 to Enhance Digital Collections

by Ellyssa

Andrew Bullen, Information Technology Coordinator for the Illinois State Library, writes about The ‘Long Tale’: Using Web 2.0 Concepts to Enhance Digital Collections in the October issue of Computers in Libraries.

“I firmly believe that the next step for object repositories lies in a melding of wiki and digital repository concepts. This as-yet undeveloped software package would allow the creation of metadata pertinent to the described object and allow the descriptions about each object to be expanded and interlinked by registered users. Existing object repository software does not even begin to allow the development of long tale descriptions, while current wiki software allows too much freedom and provides too little structure. Perhaps the MediaWiki software, being open source, can be heavily modified to incorporate the structures and data protection elements necessary.”