Strategic Planning for Sustaining User-Generated Content in Digital Collections

Experimentation and exploration are hallmarks of innovative libraries, but as experiments become on-going projects and investigations become long-term commitments, it is important to gain perspective on how the roles of librarians, archivists, and information professionals are changing. As social computing becomes routine for computer users, libraries of all types are responding to these new expectations by building interactive communication features into their on-line collections. Social features and user-generated content raise several compelling issues as organizations strive to balance agile adaptation to the ever-evolving user environment with the realities of limited staff resources and greater administrative expectations. This paper examines the challenges inherent in efficiently managing social media and user-generated content and discusses the various stakeholders involved in managing the increased day-to-day work these initiatives create. Several strategies are suggested to help develop an flexible and supportive organizational framework that can effectively sustain and deliver on the promise of social computing.