http://www.oclc.org/research/publications/library/2011/2011-02.pdf
Metadata helps users locate resources that meet their specific needs. But metadata also helps us to understand the data we find and helps us to evaluate what we should spend our time on. Traditionally, staff at libraries, archives, and museums (LAMs) create metadata for the content they manage. However, social metadata—content contributed by users—is evolving as a way to both augment and recontexutalize the content and metadata created by LAMs. User-contributed content can enrich existing metadata and can be integrated with or separated from the content of LAM sites. Enriching LAM metadata improves the quality and relevancy of users’ search results and helps people to understand and to evaluate the content.
The cultural heritage organizations in the RLG Partnership are eager to expand their reach into user communities and to take advantage of users’ expertise to enrich their descriptive metadata. In 2009 and 2010, a 21-member RLG Partners Social Metadata Working Group from five countries reviewed 76 sites of most relevance to libraries, archives, and museums that supported such social media features as tagging, comments, reviews, images, videos, ratings, recommendations, lists, links to related articles, etc. The working group analyzed the results of a survey sent to site managers and discussed the factors that contribute to successful—and not so successful—use of social metadata.