I was going to reply with a grocery list of Kete features that can serve the goal of data reuse, but rather than be an advertisement for the open source software I work on I’ll mention a few nuances to the issues at hand.

First, I suspect a lot of content providers are using Flickr Commons, et. al, are actually putting up content in these aggregated discovery areas (a little libraries in concept) in addition to the data having a presence on their organizations own sites. It can be thought of as a tool to drive traffic of people interested in deeper research back to their own collections online.

I also think it is interesting that we are seeing services like Twitter step into to fill some of the discoverability holes by enabling every user to become a curator of online information to direct other users to areas of shared interest.

In all cases, I think it is important for libraries (and others) to take credit for their work. If the library is opting for allowing reuse of their data, they should try to get a link back to their material on an record by record basis. This isn’t just important for the library health, but for aiding those that would use the library records if they only new about it.

I disagree about the first place people look being the local paper rather than online – but I don’t know your target audience. Without knowing the newspaper and website usage of your community I can’t comment on which would be greater ..but one thing that I do know is that as a trend newspaper circulation is falling and website use is growing

According to the New York Times on 29 April 2009: ” The rate of decline in print circulation at the nation’s newspapers has accelerated since last fall, as industry figures released Monday show a more than 7 percent drop compared with the previous year, while another recent analysis showed that newspaper Web site audiences had increased 10.5 percent in the first quarter. Fall in Newspaper Sales Accelerates to pass 7% .

Given the 10.5% growth in use of newspaper websites, I think that there is probably a group of people who we don’t see in our libraries and who we can – and should – now try to reach.

Whether we conceptualise this as experimental or not it does not matter, but the popularity of services like the Flickr Commons and Picture Australia, where libraries and museums are using Flickr rather than their own websites for public access to their images, prove that there is a demand for our data to be put online now.