My studiomate Maria *just* launched The Curator’s Code — a movement to honor and standardize attribution of discovery across the web. (This is so dear to me, I can barely breathe as I type!)
While we have systems in place for literary citation, image attribution, and scientific reference, we don’t yet have a system that codifies the attribution of discovery in curation as a currency of the information economy, a system that treats discovery as the creative labor that it is.
This is what The Curator’s Code is – a system for honoring the creative and intellectual labor of information discovery by making attribution consistent and codified, the celebrated norm.
Read Maria’s post explaining The Curator’s Code in detail.
Or go straight to The Curator’s Code site and download the Bookmarklet.
Maria, I am so proud of you and thankful for making this happen! This is huge! And big giant props to Kelli Anderson for designing the site.
UPDATE: There was a lot of discussion happening around the launch of this over the past two days: Daniel Howells wrote an interesting blog post and I followed many heated debates over on Twitter. I just want to clarify one thing:
I don’t care if anyone adapts to Maria’s proposed symbols for attribution or if people continue using a simple via/HT or ~. All I care about is that people *do* attribute their findings. Why? Because it shows respect *and* most of all, it allows us to discover news sources. The ‘via’ is oftentimes a virtual door into a magic new world that I didn’t know existed.
I am just glad that this attribution conversation is taking place.
