That's my content. That's my creativity. That's my curriculum! Do you want copyright and cataloguing with that?

What are libraries doing about collecting and managing user-generated content? In an era of globalisation we increasingly value the unique and the locally grown over the mass-produced, high food miles equivalent. At the grower’s market we carefully select ingredients despite the odd shapes, unpredictable quantities and without accompanying metadata about ingredients, nutritional value and use by dates. However, it seems that we are slow to apply the same philosophy when we select resources for our libraries. Instead of relishing the variety, freshness and freedom of open, user-generated content, we are restricting library users to a diet of commercial content and subscription services. Is this perhaps because it’s safer and easier to use content that comes in neat packages with strict instructions on how to use it? Libraries are no strangers to the ideals of sharing and collaboration, so perhaps it is 20 century copyright and cataloguing practices that stop us embracing the full range of learning resources available in the 21 century? This presentation considers the benefits and challenges of user-generated content, and the philosophical shift of ‘mass innovation not mass production’ (Leadbeater, 2008). Using examples such as open access, creative commons, and wikis the session will look at what education can learn from projects that support collaboration, personalisation and creativity in learning. At a practical level, we will look at tools libraries can use to help their school communities to identify open education resources, collaboratively tag resources to match curriculum goals and create and share new open education resources. By constantly asking ‘is there an open way of accessing and organising this content?’ library staff can reduce duplication of effort and ‘content miles’ even in an era of national curriculum. That’s my content. That’s my creativity. That’s my curriculum! Do you want cataloguing and copyright with that? © 2009, Australian School Library Association Inc., and therein by its author. Page 1 of 10 ASLA XXI Biennial Conference 2009 – engage explore celebrate Introduction One popular description of Web 2.0 is the ‘read/write web’ (Gillmor 2004, p.3). Libraries have fantastic processes for managing physical resources, and many have applied these processes to dealing with the ‘read’ part of the web. However, it is more difficult to find evidence of libraries that deal effectively with digital content that makes use of the ‘write’ capabilities of Web 2.0 or user-generated content. The Horizon Report (2007, p.9) identified user created content as the technology that is most likely to have an immediate impact on teaching and learning, with the people formerly known as the users now very much in control of everything ‘from classifying and tagging to creating and uploading.’ As organisations that declare the users (or the learners) to be at the centre of their service, libraries seem particularly slow to trust their users and give them any of this control. This paper considers three elements of Web 2.0 philosophy and practice which represent a starting point for library staff seeking to optimise the learning potential of the read/write web. Social bookmarking invites users into the process of collecting and helps them develop concepts and practices around collaboration, collective intelligence and social tagging. User-generated content recognises that contribution from the community builds authenticity, creativity and innovation and raises issues of digital archiving, personalisation and point of view. Open licensing maximises the value of content by facilitating free flow of information, media, data and ideas, and enables users to remix these to create new content.