The Deep Waters of Content Curation Tools

Last week I dove into the deep end of digital content curation.

I feel like this is an apt metaphor that works on multiple levels. As a kid growing up I was not a strong swimmer. When I had the chance to go to a pool I would stick to the shallow end where I knew I could touch the bottom without completely submerging my head. When I was feeling particularly brave, I would venture out to the part of the pool where the bottom started to pitch down, inching further and further until the very tips of my toes couldn’t touch without my head dunking below the surface of the water. I avoided going past this point. The deep end was intimidating and even a little scary. I knew there was a bottom, but I couldn’t see it and I certainly didn’t think I could touch it. There was just water and below that more water.

The last time I checked there were approximately a gazillion tools available to organize and curate digital content. No lie, that’s a lot, and it can kind of feel like the deep end of a swimming pool, a bit overwhelming and capable of inducing doubt in your abilities. With no visible end in sight, where does one begin? Here’s where the second part of that metaphor comes in. Sometimes the best way to overcome a challenge is to immerse yourself in it. I was never going to make it into the deep end of the pool with my current strategy. My slow, calculated approach allowed the fear of the unknown to win every time. I eventually built up enough courage to face this challenge head on and took a leap off the diving board and plunged into the deep end. When I resurfaced I came to the realization that the deep end wasn’t as bad as I thought.

So, what does any of this have to do with content curation? If you’ve been hanging out in the shallow end wondering if the curation gig is right for you, my advice would be to jump in and test the waters. There’s no wrong answer to the question of where to start. Pick one, or several tools and try them out. Many applications are completely free to use and those that do operate on a paid subscription typically offer free trial periods. Sign up for a free e-mail account (Gmail, AOL, Outlook, etc.) to use while registering for all these new applications.  This way, you can avoid cluttering up your actual inbox until you find the right tool.

I also recommend that you come up with a system for keeping track of all the usernames and passwords you will be generating while trying out these tools, even if it’s just simple paper and pencil. Today, most web browser have the ability to manage your website credentials for you, making it a breeze to log in to the tools you’ve found. If you are like me, coming up with a strong password can be a challenge. You can try a couple password generators here and here.

The most important thing to remember is that not every tool will be perfect. Focus on finding the tool that works best for you and meets your needs. With the amount of applications out there, you don’t have to settle for something that falls short. Finally, don’t be afraid to seek out help. While I certainly felt all alone as my feet left the safety of the diving board, in reality, there were lifeguards strategically positioned all around the pool, ready to jump in if I got in trouble. The same is true about these online tools. If you get stuck using a tool, try the help section of the application’s website. They typically have how-to guides on navigating their tool to get the most out of it.  They usually come with easy to follow pictures and now, many of them include video tutorials that you can follow along with. A quick web search will reveal a number of user generated guides and videos to help you out as well.

Digital curation is all about serving up the best content for your audience, whether they are friends, students, colleagues or customers.  New tools are regularly coming out to make this process easier and more fun for both the producer and the consumer.  Take them for a spin and try out their features.  Doesn't have what you're looking for?  No problem; move on to the next one until you find what will work for your needs.  So, what are you waiting for?  Jump in, the water’s fine!

Pearltrees: One answer to the question: What to do with all this content?

The tools we are exploring this week are all about digital curation. This got me thinking about what it means to curate and what purpose it serves. What popped into my head was the good old top 10 list. Top 10 lists have been a staple of late night comedy shows and is one of the bits that David Letterman is most well known for from his days as the host of the Late Show. But they show up lots of places covering all manner of subjects from the mundane to the bizarre. Everyone loves a good top 10 list. Why? Because top 10 lists allow us to avoid weeding through all the mediocre and sub-par contenders and skip right to the best of the best, the creme de la creme.

Curation represents value added. The investment of time and effort to cultivate not just a random assortment of things but a carefully filtered collection of relevant material.

One of the obvious benefits of curation is organization. I admit I am not very organized when it comes to the things I find online. My Google Chrome bookmarks bar is overrun with things I’ve come across and thought, “Hmm, this is interesting, I should probably save this so I can get back to it again in the future.” And so it gets added to the long list of other finds. I tried to clean things up a bit by adding folders, but that just seems to add and additional layer to dig through to find what I’m looking for. The crux of the problem is that my current system relies on my ability to 1. remember that I saved something and 2. recall what I named the bookmark. These are big assumptions. Some websites incorporate an icon, which can makes it easier to identify what it is at a glance. But other bookmarks leave me scratching my head wondering, “Why did I need to hang on to this?”

There are many, many tools out there that aim to solve this problem of content management. Shirley Williams used Listly to curate a collection of 55 tools used to curate social web content (ironically, Listly is listed as #2, though I don’t think there is any ranking implied in the order). I decided to go with #15 on Shirley’s list and set out to see what Pearltrees had to offer.

When I first went to check out this digital curation tool, I thought it was named peartrees, so I was expecting to see a lot of pear icons. Only when I was signing up for an account did I notice the letter “L” in the name. After this discovery it made a lot more sense to me. Pearls of wisdom + Tree of knowledge = Pearltrees. I don’t know if this is what the creators had in mind, but I think it works.

Pearltrees lets you create collections of web pages, files, photos, videos, notes, etc. on any topic you’re interested in. Rather than try and explain it in words, I recommend you check out the quick introduction video here. The free version gives you 1GB of storage space, which seems adequate, since you are not really storing the content on your account but rather storing the link to the content hosted somewhere else on the Internet. Kind of like how the IT department always tells you that you shouldn’t save all of your files to you computer desktop, but shortcuts are perfectly fine!

The Good

An essential part of any good curated collection is presentation. Why go through the time and trouble of gathering all of these pearls from the four corners of the web if in the end it looks like crap. Pearltrees has a sleek user interface that is reminiscent of the album cover view in Apple’s iTunes with file tree navigation in the left panel and a tile grid of all the items in the main window. Customizable backgrounds to match the theme of each collection is a nice touch. In the free version, the program automatically assigns an image to each tile based on the content it holds; you can customize these images with a premium (paid subscription) account. You can drag and drop items making it easy to rearrange them in the desired order. And in an apparent nod to the early days of Apple’s graphical user interface, you can get rid of a pearl by dragging it to the trash can. Another nice feature of Pearltrees is that you are able to nest collections, that is you can have collections within collections. This allows you drill down into specific aspects of a larger topic while still keeping everything neatly organized.

But beyond the shiny interface, where Pearltrees really shines is in its sharing and collaboration capabilities. There are three icons at the top of a collection for “team-up” “share” and “related collections.”

Screenshot of sharing and collaboration features

Using an e-mail address or your Gmail or Yahoo contacts, you can invite members to collaborate on your collection. There are nine different ways to share a collection with others to view including Facebook, Twitter and my personal favorite, an auto-generated QR code. Here is the code for the collection I created on copyright. Apple devices running iOS 11 can read QR codes with the camera if enabled, otherwise a dedicated QR reader is necessary.

Copyright collection QR code

Finally, related collections allows you view the public collections of others that are similar to your own. There is much more content out there than any one person can cull through and this feature lets you take advantage of those value added efforts of others by either copying pearls to your collection, or adding entire collections that appeal to you and subscribing to receive real-time updates.

The Bad

One of the ways Pearltrees allows you to add items to your collection is by sending an email to add@pearltrees.com from the email account you signed up with. This has the potential to be a real time-saver as you can automatically file a pearl by designating the appropriate collection in the subject line using a hashtag. If you plan to use this feature you'll want to keep your collection titles short and intuitive. Unfortunately, the reality of this feature left something to be desired. In my test it took nearly 10 minutes from sending a simple text e-mail before receiving the reply that it had been added to my dropzone and was available to add to a collection. If you like to batch curate this may not be a problem, but if you prefer to organize in real-time the wait could be a problem.

The other issue that I ran into was the lack of annotation. In the free version you can comment on a pearl but these are stored external to the actual content. Only in the premium version can you actually edit the content of the pearl and add in annotations. This is where you can add extra value by highlighting what’s important and articulating why it’s being saved or perhaps only a piece of it is relevant to the collection topic. Unfortunately this feature (among others) will cost you $4.99/month ($4.49/month for teachers). This is perhaps the biggest downside of this tool; however, with a premium subscription you get the ability to create private collections as well as remove ads. With so many tools available these days for digital content curation, chances are you can find one that will let you annotate for free.

Overall, I liked what Pearltrees had to offer with its collaboration and related collections search features. The interface was intuitive and adding pearls was relatively painless. The lack of annotations in the free version were a strike against it as well as the recurring subscription costs for premium features. Have you tried Pearltrees? If so, feel free to share your experience by leaving a comment.