Context
• In 2012, the library of Greenwich Village (one of the 85
branches of the New York Public Library, NYPL) had the idea
to collect the memory of its neighborhood to create an archive
of oral history on Greenwich Village.
• They were helped in this project by a specialist in oral history
for collecting the stories, and by the NYPL Lab for giving
online access to the videos and opening them to annotation.
• Three kind of participation were possible: being interviewed,
interviewing the storyteller, annotating the story once put
online.
Problem : Motivation
• But why would people participate to a such project?
• What would lead them to be interviewer, interviewee or annotators in this project?
• What kind of motivations?
the motivation to tell its story in a video which will be displayed online,
then the motivation to interview somebody whom we know or not,
and finally that to annotate, to add tags, description, of the interviews once they were publishing on-line.
Aims
• Understanding the motivational factors is important on
one hand to increase the participation of the public in
collaborative project,
• and on another hand to discuss the political aspect of
this kind of projects, that are changing the idea of
knowledge, engagement, and community.
A specific case
• This project appeals to different scheme than oral history (OH) :
• In OH, the interviewer is generally a researcher, an archivist, a historian or a sociologist. His/her motivation is bound to its researches. In our case, interviewer is an user of the library and his/her participation is bound to his/her own interest for the project.
• In OH, the interviewee was chosen individually, as woman, worker, immigrant, survivor… and if he/she has some motivation to be interviewed, the interview is still coming from an outside request. In our case, each of the participants chose to participate in a project, proposed by the library, but was not chosen individually.
• Finally, in OH, the annotation is done by the researcher himself, or by another researcher using the same document for different objectives. In our case, the annotator can be someone totally out of the project.
Method
• The method used in this study is a literature review.
• Sources consulted ranges from library and information
science journals, but also from history science or social
sciences journals.
• Rare are articles dedicated to the oral archives or oral
history studying the dynamics of motivation.
• Articles dedicated to the participation, and in particular to the
projects of crowdsourcing, are studying motivations’ factors.
Defining motivation
• Intrinsic or extrinsic motivation, (Ryan and Deci, 2000)
• Rational motivation (based on the social standards) and motivation by the affect (Brabham, 2012).
" earn money, advance his/her career, be recognized by his/her peers, meet new people and socialize, contribute to a collaborative effort, have fun, learn of new skills and knowledge, give itself challenges with complex tasks, to express himself." (Brabham, 2012, p.315)
• « Egoism, altruism, collectivism and principalism » (Alam & Campbell, 2012).
intrinsic motivation : personal motivation, community / social motivations, leisure or pleasure
extrinsic motivation : attribution, recognition and gains, indirect returns and advocacy.
An articulation between individual and collective motivations
Identity and recognition
• The identity is built in participatory project through finding a meaning (Owens, 2012) :
in the objective,
in the action itself
in terms of membership
• In crowdsourcing projects, the social function is obvious in the importance of the audience, in the character of visibility which we obtain by participating (Zollers, on 2007).
• "it seems to us that the witness looks especially for a peaceful place of certificate, listening and recognition of itself; recorded or filmed, it is the track of its existence or of his work which he hopes to transmit…" (Descamps, 2006)
Impact of this articulation (individual/collective) on self-construction
From community …
• Participation by tags allow to exceed the sociocultural
hierarchies been imperative by classifications recognized as
standards. It allows to recreate societies, communities around
certain keywords.(Zollers, 2007).
• Projects of oral history allow the visibility of communities
which were either abandoned by the circuits of academic
publications, or who were not in possibility to produce by
themselves archives on their community. (Yow, 2005)
• Project of oral history has an important function of
communities’ empowerment.
… to engagement
• The motivation in tagger in a project of crowdsourcing expresses himself in expression of the opinion, the performance (way of showing itself, of being known or recognize) and activism (defend positions or take a stand) (Zollers, 2007).
• “For lack of archiving to spread better, let us create projects of local and regional collection and let us multiply the initiatives of development of the result of these collections. We shall so contribute to maintain living being the culture from here." (Roberge, 2002, p 23)
• “ (…) to make participate the population in the creation of a collective collection and an inheritance to be protected, while democratizing the collection.” (Roberge, 2002, p 21-22)
• The democratic ideal of life in common is mobilized in these participative and memorial projects.
Participation is for the participants a real commitment in favor of their
culture and of their community.
Library and community engagement
• The library is a true public place (Gaus and Weech, 2008)
• As wrote it Brantley about self-publication: « This does not
reshape the commercial publishing world, but it does
something more vital: It ensures a voice for the commonweal.
By connecting local authors with the world, public libraries
unite the world with their communities » (Brantley, 2014).
• « The heritage domain faces the challenge of reassessing its
role in society to stay relevant and to continue to have a
significant social impact”. (Holley, 2009).
Not being surprised of engagement of libraries in such projects
Conclusion n°1 : on the oral history
project of the NYPL
• The factors of motivation in this project are thus varied, combinable, complex. This literature review is just the first step.
• Motivation is always individual, so we cannot skip of an individual study, online survey and individual interviews, of the participant’s motivation.
• Motivation is also bound to the collective, to the social standards, so we cannot skip of a fine study of the different contexts.
• The second step has already begun with the launch of a survey in Greenwich Village, and soon in Harlem. The literature review helped to define the questions of the survey and of the interview’s guide.
Conclusion n°2 : on libraries
• For libraries interested in such projects, the question of motivation of the public lead us to question communication, technics, but also the political role of libraries : a place where the community creates itself, stands and acts.
• Factors of motivations other than individualistic show us that there is no participative project which is not eminently political.
• Thinking to the library as a place to make this political exercise is changing the institutional image of the library.
• “These organizations must move away from agonistic, deliberative democratic modes, and must conceive of public crowdsourcing ventures as more than simply online replicas of traditional public participation methods; these organizations will need to allow the crowd to truly support the problem-solving mission of a crowdsourcing venture for the public good, to generate in the crowd a sense of duty and love _ and even addiction _ to such a project” (Brabham, 2010, p 1124).
References 1/2
Alam, S. L., & Campbell, J. (2012). Crowdsourcing Motivations in a not-for-profit GLAM context: The Australian Newspapers
Digitisation Program. In 23rd Australasian Conference on Information Systems. Geelong.
Berger, S. G. (2013). Women’s Words: The Feminist Practice of Oral History. Routledge.
Brabham, D. C. (2010). MOVING THE CROWD AT THREADLESS. Information, Communication & Society, 13(8), 1122-1145.
Brabham, D. C. (2012). Motivations for Participation in a Crowdsourcing Aplication to Impove Public Engagement in Transit
Planning. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 40(3), 307-328.
Brantley, P. (2014, juin). Beating the Odds: Building a Publishing « Maker » Culture. American Libraries. Chicago, Etats-Unis.
Descamps, F. (2006). Et si on ajoutait l’image au son ? Quelques éléments de réflexion sur les entretiens filmés dans le cadre d’un
projet d’archives orales. Bulletin de liaison des adhérents de l’AFAS, 29(29).
Featherstone, R. M., Lyon, B. J., & Ruffin, A. B. (2008). Library roles in disaster response: an oral history project by the National
Library of Medicine. Journal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA, 96(4), 343-350.
Gaus, E. R., & Weech, T. (2008). The Meeting Room: Libraries as Community Centers for Culturally Diverse Populations. In 16th
BOBCATSSS Symposium 2008-Providing Access to Information for Everyone (BOBCATSSS 2008). Humboldt-Universität zu
Berlin.
Holley, R. (2009, novembre 18). Crowdsourcing and social engagement: potential, power and freedom for libraries and users.
[Presentation].
References 2/2
Holley, R. (2010). Crowdsourcing: How and Why Should Libraries Do It? D-Lib Magazine, 16(3/4). doi:10.1045/march2010-holley
Klaebe, H. G., Foth, M., Burgess, J. E., & Bilandzic, M. (2007). Digital Storytelling and History Lines: Community Engagement in a Master-Planned Development. In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Virtual Systems and Multimedia : Exchange and Experience in Space and Place, VSMM 2007. Brisbane,QLD: Australasian Cooperative Research Centre for Interaction Design Pty, Limited.
Moirez, P., Moreux, J.-P., & Josse, I. (2013). Etat de l’art en matière de Crowdsourcing dans les bibliothèques numériques (BnF No. Livrable L-4.3.1 / FIU 12) (p. 1-77). Bibliothèque nationale de France.
Owens, T. (2012, mai 20). The Crowd and The Library.
Roberge, M. (2002). De la collecte à la mise en valeur. Cap-aux-Diamants: La revue d’histoire du Québec, 19–23.
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivations: Classic Definitions and New Directions. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25(1), 54-67.
Shopes, L. (2002). Oral History and the Study of Communities: Problems, Paradoxes, and Possibilities. The Journal of American History, 89(2), 588-598.
Strohmaier, M., Körner, C., & Kern, Ro. (2010). Why Do Users Tag? Detecting Users’ Motivation for Tagging in Social Tagging Systems. In Proceedings of the Fourth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (p. -342). Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.
Yow, V. R. (2005). Recording Oral History: A Guide for the Humanities and Social Sciences. Rowman Altamira.
Zollers, A. (2007). Emerging Motivations for Tagging: Expression, Performance, and Activism, p. 1-7. Banff, Canada.
Thank you !
• Raphaëlle Bats
Enssib, Lyon, France
Centre Gabriel Naudé
• Contacts