The Power of Information Curation: Adding Value, Context, and Connection

The Power of Information Curation: Adding Value, Context, and Connection

In today's information age, the ability to manage and efficiently deal with information has become crucial for success and thriving in our lifetime. Unlike in the past, where physical force or possessions determined one's opportunities, now it's about what you know, how skilled you are in finding and managing information, and who is in your network of contacts.

However, the abundance of information available can be overwhelming and disconnected from relevant resources. That's where curation comes in. Curation is the process of using expertise in a field to gather great content around a specific theme and present it in a way that educates others. By curating, one can provide context, value, and a specific perspective to information items.

But why do people curate? It's not always for the direct purpose of saving time, appearing more authoritative, or gaining customers. The real motivation lies in caring. Curators genuinely care about what they do and curate because it helps them produce better results for themselves. When they share their curated collections, they extend these benefits to their customers, contacts, and friends.

Curators are personally interested in their resources, using curation as a means to deeply learn, vet bad resources, uncover true gems, and organize them effectively. It is a way for them to find, pinpoint, and share important and unique resources among the vast sea of information available. By sharing curated content, curators can help others as well, making curation a truly beneficial practice.

Curation is a natural solution to the phenomenon of resource abundance. It helps individuals save time by providing easy and organized access to otherwise difficult-to-find and verify information and resources. Curation involves vetting, verification, resource-finding, providing a viewpoint, and synthesizing what is of value while crediting sources systematically.

There are several motivations behind curation. Firstly, the desire to "take care" of an information space and make it easy for others to extract immediate value from it. Secondly, the desire to share and inform, educate, and entertain a specific audience. This desire is often driven by a will to help, support, and cultivate a community of like-minded individuals interested in the same topic.

Furthermore, curation fulfills the will to create something meaningful and of lasting value, even if it is for a limited audience. Public, non-commercial digital curation provides a social good—a commons that everyone can benefit from. Curators help themselves and others by bringing the best of what they have discovered, vetted, and added value to.

Beyond the individual pieces of content, curation is 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 involves pattern-recognition, seeing various pieces of culture and spotting similarities across them that paint a cohesive picture of a larger trend.

Larry Page, the co-founder of Google, recognized the importance of curation by devising a method to count and qualify backlinks on the web. This approach revolutionized the internet, making it a more valuable place by giving context and relevance to information through citations.

In conclusion, the power of information curation lies in its ability to add value, context, and connection to the vast sea of information available. By curating, individuals can save time, help others, and create a meaningful resource that benefits society as a whole. To harness the benefits of curation, here are three actionable pieces of advice:

• 1. Find your passion: Curate content around a specific theme that genuinely interests you. It will not only make the curation process more enjoyable but also ensure that you provide unique insights and perspectives.

• 2. Vet your sources: Take the time to verify the credibility and reliability of the resources you curate. By doing so, you establish trust with your audience and ensure that the information you share is of high quality.

• 3. Embrace collaboration: Curate in collaboration with others who share similar interests. By pooling resources and perspectives, you can create a more comprehensive and diverse curated collection that benefits a wider audience.

In this age of information overload, curation has become a powerful tool for navigating and making sense of the vast amount of resources available. By curating, we not only add value to our own lives but also contribute to a more informed and connected society. So, start curating and share your knowledge to achieve immortality, as the Dalai Lama wisely said.