the long tail

Libraries/librarians act as New Producers to the extent that they are concerned with the development and the implementation of usage-centric metadata, making media more accessible to users, rather than production-centric metadata. Looking at Anderson’s Architecture of participation diagram (pg. 84), while librarians can and do create original media, the more traditional role is closer to being a ‘remixer’ – modifying and/or adapting the works of others to fulfill info needs—able to harness the production-centric metadata to achieve that end and able to create usage-centric metadata to make the information more accessible to users.

“..new tastemakers are simply people whose opinions are respected. They influence the behavior of others, often encouraging them to try new things they wouldn’t otherwise pursue.” (pg 107)

Because they may not know those things exist, or there’s a connection between something they do like and an unknown. I’m thinking specifically about the long list of ways the library where I work provides variations on the “what to read next” theme. We have stacks of free bookmarks that start with the line “If You Like author A, you might like B,C,D, or…”, we have email newsletters promoting new titles, Notable Books, anything else that both promotes the library itself as a useful institution and the materials housed within. And from the 'If you build it, they will come'-category, my library (and no doubt as many others with budgets that permit) buy new packaging or formats in an effort to be current, anticipating needs based on experience. For example, we got 100 or more Playaways in and it took some promotion within the library, talking them up, demonstrating how easy they were to use, mentioning to someone borrowing books-on-tape or CDs that we’d just gotten in a new format they might like to try. Ditto Blu-ray, but this may backfire. There's some internal debate about whether enough patrons have the players, or whether there's going to be a reaction from the public as there was when the VHS-DVD transition started.

I’m a little vague on the New Markets question….reread that chapter twice and cannot see the link to librarians.

There is one point that I completely disagree with Anderson though. In the comparison of Google to a library, claiming that the “constraints of physical shelves” are no match for the freedom of natural language searches in Google. Anderson uses the example of his own book and all of it’s various and potential shelf placements using the Dewey Decimal System versus the category-free access in Google. I thought the implication that shelf browsing as the primary means to access his book in a library was odd, or at least presumptive. I guess I’m wondering if he knows about subject headings which combat the issue of books (or any other media) that span two or more subjects.