Beyond Linear Texts - CM #14
There's a universe of untapped possibilities beyond our present focus on linear texts. Infinite-canvas tools. Examples of real-world curation monetized projects.
Hello and welcome.
The end of the year is near and I - as always - do not dwell much on celebrating and making presents. I like to do both for the rest of the year, where possible, on a daily basis.
This counter attitude doesn’t stop me though from wanting to wish you the very best, hoping you have the opportunity to enjoy some holidays and to share and celebrate with your loved ones the dreams and desires you hope to realize.
May peace come to this world.
Robin Good
In this issue:
Insights
The prize is for understanding
Seeing the bigger picture
Curation Requires Time
Trends
Beyond Linear Texts
Tools (Premium)
Infinite Canvas Tools (11)
Real-World Examples (Premium)
Library of Free xxx for Commercial Use
Catalog of Historic xxxx To Visit
Open Library of Free xxxxxx
Key Curation Insights
1) The Prize Is for Understanding
Content is no longer king.
There is no longer a premium on being the first to know.
The future lies in being the first to understand in a way that draws others to that same understanding and then to their own conclusions.
Robin Good
2) Seeing The Bigger Picture
A great benefit, for those who hoard large quantities of information to organize and pick the most interesting parts, is that, over time, these people start to connect seemingly unrelated dots into patterns and trends that allow them to see well beyond what everyone else sees.
“…the art of curation isn’t about the individual pieces of content, but about how these pieces fit together, what story they tell by being placed next to each other, and what statement the context they create makes about culture and the world at large.”
“Great curation is also about pattern-recognition — seeing various pieces of culture and spotting similarities across them that paint a cohesive picture of a larger trend.”
Source: Allison, Chris. “The Art of Curation: An Interview with Maria Popova from BrainPickings”
3) Curation Requires Time
Notwithstanding the viral content-marketing tam-tam keeps selling the idea of content curation as a miracle-shortcut to work less, produce more content and get all of the benefits that an online publisher would want to have, reality has quite a different shade.
To gain reader's attention, trust and interest, it is evidently not enough to pull together a few interesting titles while adding a few lines of introductory text.
Unless your readers are not very interested themselves in the topic you cover, why would they take recommendations from someone who has not even had the time to fully go through his suggested resources?
Superficially picking apparently interesting content from titles or even automatically selecting content for others to read is like recommending movies or music records based on how much you like their trailers or their cover layouts.
Can that be truly useful beyond attracting some initial extra visibility?
How can one become a trusted information source if one does not thoroughly look and understand what he is about to recommend?
This is why selling or even thinking of using content curation as a time and money-saver is really nonsense.
Again, for some, this type of light content curation may work in attracting some extra visibility in the short-term, but it will be deleterious in the long one, as serious readers discover gradually that content being suggested has not even been read, let alone being summarized, highlighted or contextualized.
Content curation takes serious time.
A lot more than the one needed to create normal original content.
To curate content you need to:
1) Find good content, resources and references. Even if you have good tools, the value is in searching where everyone else is not looking. That takes time.
2) Read, verify and vet each potential resource, by taking the time needed to do this thoroughly.
3) Make sense of what that resource communicates or represents / offers and be able to synthesize it for non-experts who will read about it.
4) Synthesize and highlight the value of the chosen resource within the context of your interest area and audience.
5) Enrich the resource with relevant references, and related links for those that will want to find out more about it.
6) Credit and attribute sources and contributors.
7) Preserve, classify and archive whatever you are curating.
8) Share, distribute, promote the curated work you have produced.
Creating it is not enough.
(While it is certainly possible to do a good curation job without doing exactly all of the tasks I have outlined above, I believe that it is ideal to try to do as many as these as possible, as each adds more value to the end result.)
Curation is all about quality, insight and attention to details.
It is not about quantity, speed, saving time, producing more with less.
Robin Good
Curation Trends
Going Beyond Linear Texts in Digital Curation
Content curators will soon embrace new forms of organizing, displaying and presenting information that go beyond the standard linear text/document approach.
The linear text approach is fine when there’s a story, a sequence of events, or a list of resources to be analyzed and reviewed.
But when there’s a need to provide more context, to see similarities and differences with other situations, to see how things are related and often deeply connected, linear, sequential burst of information may not be the best route to convey all these other critical elements.
The ability to distinguish the forest from the trees, to see both the whole and not just the individual pieces, is often vital in providing a better understanding of the subject at hand and a better starting point from which to decide where to dive in deeper.
For these reasons, I look forward to see the next generation of tools supporting content curation activities, to provide instruments, features and facilities that will make it easy and possible to organize, structure and present ideas and information resources in new and more effective ways.
Here’s a detailed list of where things can be tangibly improved:
Layout - Mobility
Whole document structure and contents visible from the beginningZooming in and out of individual content elements and into the overall doc structure
MultiMediality
Integration of text, images, video, audio, embeds, PDFs, RSS feeds and moreVisualization
Illustration of concepts and ideas through symbols, icons, animationsInterconnection
Always-on interconnectivity with other parts of the documentInternal Depth
Vertical deep-dives inside the main documentComparison
Integrated ability to compute parallels and comparisons with similar docs
Extended Search
Searching beyond the main doc and into all other cited, mentioned resourcesCompare & Merge
Discover what is available inside other collections that you are missing. Merge parts of multiple collections.
Forking
Create branches of other people's curated resources. Extend their work privately or publicly.
Co-production
Native option to receive contributions, revisions, updates from other contributorsSynthesis
Integrated summarizing and outlining features.
History
Transparent and reviewable history of doc creation, editing and revisions
Preservation
Multi-level auto-preservation and built-in replication features guaranteeing extended lifetimeMulti-Perspective
Allowance for multiple co-authors developing different and contrasting viewsMulti-View
Options to switch between different possible views (titles-only, grid, list, with or without images, etc.)
*I hope that some of these features are taken into considerations by those who develop, build and commercialize knowledge management, note-taking and curation/publishing tools.
**Please see the section on infinite-canvas tools (premium subscribers ) to discover a growing group of information tools that have already integrated at least a few of the key features I have suggested above.
*The Content Finder Toolkit*
Good news.
I am about to publish a special new curated content resource.
It is a content discovery toolkit that contains over 500 vetted resources and apps to find any kind of content (from icons to films - and most of the time at zero cost).
This toolkit is the fruit of many months of work and it includes a one-of-a-kind, unique collection of tools and apps to find:
News
(top news sources - mainstream)Newsletters
(find newsletters by topic, audience size, language, etc.)Discussions
(comments, replies and threads from popular forums and groups)Trends
(next hot topics, upcoming interests, emerging patterns)Images
(stock and original photographs available for re-use)Videos
(stock footage, clips, backgrounds)Icons
(symbols, emoji, etc.)Cutouts
(silhouettes PNGs on transparent backgrounds)Sounds
(from nature, tech, work, sports, etc.)Music
(tracks that can be used for audio/video)Podcasts
(where to go to search and find them)Books
(where to discover and taste new, rare and alternative books)Quotes
(famous phrases and citations)Documentaries
(where to find the best ones ranked and organized by categories)
Alternative Search Engines
plus Public Data Sets and Open Academic Resources (OER)
The Content Finder Toolkit is 100% free for all my premium subscribers across the three newsletters I publish:
If you are a premium subscriber you don’t have to do nothing. You will receive automatically as a new year present.
*If you are not a premium subscriber but wish to access the Content Finder toolkit, you can upgrade before Dec.31st or you can reserve for yourself a paid copy by leaving your name and email here.
Curation Tools & Resources
(for Premium subscribers)
In this issue:
Infinite Canvas Tools
(11 recommended apps)
Curation Monetized: Real World Examples
(for Premium subscribers)
Library of Free XXX for Commercial Use
Catalog of Historic XXX To Visit
Open Library of Free XXXXX XXX