Behavioural Traces and Indirect User-to-User Mediation in the Participatory Library

Participatory information spaces including social media platforms provide affordances for users both to leave behavioural traces of their informational activities and to find such traces from other users, a.k.a. user-to-user mediation and social navigation. Special focus in the paper is on affordances for indirect user-to-user mediation by "trace leavers" and "trace finders" in a participatory library setting, particularly in the physical Library 2.0. The paper presents a holistic approach, viewing human, physical, and digital information resources as supplementary parts of an integrated library platform that functions as an enabling space for creative practices like user participation and user-to-user mediation. Such a library may be seen as a participatory medium that can facilitate and support users to develop necessary participatory competencies in all facets of the presented life cycle of information behaviour. Truly participatory libraries thus provide more affordances for users with regard to both leaving behavioural traces (create, store, share) and to following such traces (find, learn). The paper points to both low-tech and hi-tech examples including mobile and ambient technologies with rich potentials for facilitating user-to-user mediation and social navigation.

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