Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Date of this Version
2022
Document Type
Article
Abstract
Information has been an intrinsic part of humanity throughout the years. Libraries and information centers have always been considered, as the custodians of information. However, with the overwhelming of information in the digital age, libraries find it difficult to deliver the right information at the right time. Despite various efforts by libraries to deliver information on time, at times the necessity of libraries is questioned. Crowdsourcing gains importance at this juncture. Today since catalogs and other allied information are mostly online, users can perform various activities like refining metadata of records, adding the new subject heading that library staff overlooked, etc, thus revitalizing the existing library services. Also, today as libraries are trying to re-engineer themselves by expanding their services and adding new services, an audience that can assist libraries in this process will be an added advantage. The purpose of this paper is to study how crowdsourcing will be helpful to libraries and information centers to deal with these aspects, i.e. improving the existing service and adding new services. A crowdsourcing cycle has been proposed in this conceptual paper, which aims to delineate how crowdsourcing aids the library in accomplishing the above-mentioned aspects.