Metadata is the silent champion of our world. Without it, files can’t be opened, images can’t be found and documents lose their authenticity. It is metadata that lets your boss know your tweet was sent in works hours from the beach! Yet whilst metadata like this can be easily generated much metadata takes a great deal of time and effort to produce. The Dublin Core standard requires fifteen elements, covering everything from a description to rights. Whilst each element is important, encoding all of this isn’t always easy.
The difficulty of producing metadata has led to some innovations in the cultural heritage community. The British Library has collaborated with Metadata Games to produce games that let the player tag collections. This tagging allows recently digitised collections to be more accessible without taking up the vast amounts of time of busy staff. It also enables the public to view collections in a fun, informal way. This opens up the heritage sector, particularly libraries and archives which can be seen to be stuffy and unrelated to the everyday.
However it is important to consider what this move will achieve. Is the public a reliable source of information? It is all too easy to accidentally mistype something and enter false information. As it is in the format of a game people are less likely to carefully consider what they are inputting, in the same way that a trained librarian or archivist might. If tags are being approved by staff then the efficiency of the process is negligible. The extent to which the public is actively engaging with the collections is also questionable. The game is available on Android and so can be played on a smartphone. Will the full impact of some of the books and images be felt by someone passively staring at a screen?
Yet this collaboration marks another important move by the heritage sector in opening itself up and allowing more public engagement in collections. Generally the tags that are provided will be accurate and informative and the duds few and far between. More pertinently they will represent what the public sees when it views this image rather than what a professional, who is immersed in the collection, sees. As the user becomes more involved in collection management perhaps the public will be more engaged with libraries and archives. This move is further demonstrated by The National Archive’s Discovery catalogue, which can also be tagged by users. Time will tell if games and tagging improves accessibility and outreach but they prove the profession’s move to opening itself up and it will to make public heritage more public.