When aiming to support access to digital resources, it is a key question to decide for which scenarios this support should be provided. This decision has a huge impact on the key questions discussed in the following sections in this chapter.
In this work, the aim is a generic approach, and therefore the relevant
as-The aim is a generic
approach pects to consider are examined without focusing on a selected scenario. This is an essential difference to the majority of information systems– whether they are commercial or non-commercial – in the field of social media. To put the work presented here into context, such specialised will now first be discusses, followed by a specification of the targeted approach and facilitating conditions for its introduction. The section will close with a comparison to related generic approaches.
4.1.1 Specialised vs Generic Approaches
Most of these systems are explicitly targeting specific resource types or user groups, e.g.:
• Google’s YouTube1only supports video resources,
1see http://www.youtube.com
4.1 Definition of the Approach and Targeted Application Scenarios
• Yahoo’s Flickr2focuses and photos (while also offering video uploads),
• Delicious3 is only managing bookmarks,
• SlideShare4is only intended for uploading and managing presentations,
• BibSonomy5 developed at the University of Kassel is only supporting the management of publication data,
• etc.
Concentrating on a very specific scenario (e.g., “knowledge workers in a re-search department”) in the system’s design can certainly provide the benefit of a customised solution that takes into account the very specific characteristics of this scenario and the needs of the involved users. If designed and implemented in a proper way, such a specialised system is also very likely to outperform a generic solution that has to be adapted. Yet, a very targeted approach almost inevitably has several downsides:
• A huge modelling effort is required, e.g., for specifying and generating complex and tailored structures such as ontologies.
• A created model can always only be a snapshot – yet, people and orga-nisations evolve. Thus, maintenance is required, which is usually a very complex and time-consuming task. Furthermore, no model is able to an-ticipate all possible needs and scenarios (see Section 2.5).
• The restriction to a very specific scenario and model hinders interopera-bility with other components (e.g, tools, technologies, and other data sources) that might be used in such a scenario. Although the adaptation of such components is sometimes possible, this is once again a usually com-plex and time-consuming task.
• The resulting information system can only be repurposed in a very limited way, thus restricting means to reuse the system in different application scenarios.
2see http://www.flickr.com
3see http://delicious.com
4see http://www.slideshare.net
5see http://www.bibsonomy.org
Instead of focusing on a specific scenario in this thesis, the aim is to provide a generic approach that can potentially be applied to support access to digital resources wherever this support is needed. So instead of defining prerequisites that have to be met for infrastructures, domains or user types, characteristics of scenarios with a special need to support access are now identified, and where the benefits of social media technologies have the biggest potential. In Chap-ter 6, respective scenarios will be presented where implementations of the pre-sented approach were introduced.
4.1.2 Generic Approach: A Social Resource and Metadata Hub
It would be a futile task to provide universally valid characteristics of scenarios
Typical
where access to digital resources needs to be supported. The existence of a “per-fect system” is hardly conceivable. Yet, there are some typical characteristics that can make access to digital resources difficult, and that frequently occur in digital environments:
Abundance of available digital resources: This holds true for most informa-tion systems, independent from a specific domain or provided access types. The World Wide Web is of course the most prominent example.
The more digital resources exist in an environment, the more difficult it usually is:
• to be aware of the existence of relevant information,
• to find all digital resources that are relevant for a certain information need, and
• to filter out the unwanted ones.
Heterogeneous access to digital resources: There are many situations with-out a single point of access for all information that is potentially relevant.
Digital resources can be stored in a variety of different, and often isolated systems and repositories. Hence, users have to know about these different sources and their specifics, have to access them separately and, in gen-eral, are not able to easily find and retrieve appropriate digital resources.
Furthermore, the single sources often use different metadata for resources, both concerning how digital resources are structured and described. Each community, and sometime each single source uses its own standard to de-scribe digital resources. In addition to that, even when suitable digital re-sources are found, they often do not provide a link to further information,
4.1 Definition of the Approach and Targeted Application Scenarios
so that the search for additional information potentially has to be carried out for each source of information. Thus, accessing information is difficult and time-consuming for users.
Missing metadata for digital resources: Often no metadata exists about a digital resource except for what could be extracted from the digital re-source itself (e.g., a full text). In these cases, an information system only has very few possibilities (often only focusing on topicality) at hand to al-low to generate meaningful resource subset selections and to decide on the relevance of a digital resource.
These are the key issues that shall be tackled by means of the aimed generic A Social
Resource
• offer the social media technologies for all existing components in an envi-ronment,
• incorporate all information that is relevant in an environment, and
• enable a single point of access that allows for accessing all digital resources that exist in an environment.
Thus, this approach will from now on be referred to as a Social Resource and Metadata Hub. Figure 4.1 depicts a typical application scenario for a respective hub.
A Social Resource and Metadata Hub offers the possibility to be used as Usable as
stand-alone system or social backbone
• a stand-alone system with appropriate user interfaces that can be adapted to the needs of the specific scenario, and also as
• a component only running in the background of an environment, thus re-alising what is referred to as a social backbone from now on.
4.1.3 Facilitating Conditions for Introducing a Social Resource and Metadata Hub
Introducing social media does not necessarily provide benefits for all scenarios.
For example, sometimes it is desired that only information provided by selected experts is used (e.g., for liability reasons), and sometimes not enough users can be involved that could potentially contribute. Yet, based on the challenges and
Figure 4.1:A typical application scenario for a Social Resource and Metadata Hub
opportunities identified in Chapter 3 and the characteristics of metadata
iden-Criteria fostering
success tified in Section 2.6, the following criteria that can foster the success of a social media based approach can be deduced:
• There are enough users that can (potentially) contribute. The size of such a critical mass very much depends on the concrete application.
• The environment does not yet provide social media functionalities. This is the state in most organisations with intranets, traditional repositories or digital libraries (e.g., ARIADNE6 or OAIster7). They often follow a top-down approach with controlled publishing processes, and they only offer very few interaction or contribution possibilities to end users.
6See http://www.ariadne-eu.org
7See http://www.oclc.org/oaister