METADATA GAMES!

GAMING THE ARCHIVES

HANNAH WILSON EMPORIA STATE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LIBRARY AND INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

LI815: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

WHO CREATED IT?

Founded by Dr. Mary Flanagan and the Tiltfactor Lab in 2003
Tiltfactor is a conceptual design lab that researches, designs, launches, and publishes games and interactive experiences related to technology and human values.

WHAT ARE METADATA GAMES?

An open source initiative aimed at helping libraries, archives, and other cultural institutions use different kinds of games to bolster their archival collections through active participation from people around the world.

Metadata Games suite was created for Rauner Library at Dartmouth College and is still in its pilot phase.
It is intended for a larger open source initiative that will allow other institutions to use the games in their archives.

So far, metadata games players have generated 6,250 tags and more than 90 percent of the metadata was useful!

THE GAMES

Metadata Games consists of a suite of mini-games in which players can play alone or compete with a partner for tagging images. The results are analyzed and applied to image records within the archive.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

Certain words earn players more points; the more specific terminology used, the more points it is worth (ie., man vs. Abraham Lincoln). Solo players think up tags to describe the images they see; in the two-player scenario, partners try to come up with the same tag or tags (two player games not available yet).

ARE THERE OTHERS LIKE IT?

Play tag with with other members and your tags will help everyone find objects in the collections. http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/tag_game/start.php

fastr

a flickr game

Fastr is a game that uses flickr images.http://randomchaos.com/games/fastr/

Google Image Labeler allows you to label images and help improve the quality of Google's image search results. http://images.google.com/imagelabeler/

ADVANTAGES
Archivists need the help! Many institutions dont have the staff to create metadata for the thousands of images they own. User based tags can enhance access to the archive while offering unique insight into terminology that patrons may use while searching for images. Faculty could design courses around them. Students could use them as study guides.

DISADVANTAGES
What is the motivation for users to play? Are they actually fun and entertaining? Who will monitor the monitor tags? Another open source software that is free to use but requires staff to manage and maintain it. Variants, homonyms, plurals, misspellings?

HOW WOULD I USE METADATA GAMES?

In a digital image archive, I would have student employees/catalogers use it: -to teach them about cataloging, image tagging, and folksonomies vs. controlled vocabularies. -to help catalog old, unidentified, undocumented slides. -to learn about what kinds of terminology students might search for when seeking images. Since I dont find this game particularly fun, here are some ideas for enticing players to participate: -Museums might motivate people to play by offering free admission or discounts at gift shops. -Faculty might use it to use as a study guide: art history students could use it for studying images.

REFERENCES
For more information and to play Metadata Games, visit: http://www.tiltfactor.org/metadata-games

Howard, Jennifer (May 23, 2011). Gaming the archives. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved fromhttp://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/gaming-thearchives/31435 Richards, Barbara (May 25, 2011). Digital game helps tag college photo archives. The Dartmouth. Retrieved from http://thedartmouth.com/2011/05/25/news/metadata