Curation of Purple Cars

I curate pictures of purple cars on-line. Mostly my collection is housed and limited to Flickr pics. If I find a purple car on Flickr, I add it to a new feature the site calls “Galleries”. I have two galleries o’ cars d’ purple. Here’s the link to my purple car curation galleries: http://www.flickr.com/photos/purplecar/galleries/72157624941570735/

I have a Google Alert set on the term “Purple Car” and all its variants. I sometimes get great pictures that aren’t in Flickr, like this one by user Kenan2010 on Deviant Art:

Purple Car by Kenan2010

I love Flickr, but I needed a one-step process to add great purple car art outside the site to a gallery. Enter Pinterest (http://pinterest.com/), a web app that lets users collect pictures with links into galleries. Pinterest gives me a “Pin It!” button in my Firefox toolbar. Today, beginning with this photo, I started a new purple car art curation on Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/christinecavalier/purple-cars/. I’ve opened up the gallery so others can add pics. Join Pinterest and share the Purple Car LOVE!

Curation like this is the newest thing in web life. People are finding all sorts of ways to collect pictures, links, comments, quotes, any electronic data they want to “keep.” This amateur curation hobby has been the subject of study by academics interested in Sociology, Psychology and Anthropology. YouTube curations have been around since the beginning of YouTube. Now apps like Pinterest are popping up all over. I didn’t think I had a use for curation until I realized that I was, in fact, collecting pictures of purple cars on Flickr. (Doh!)

What do you collect? Do you sort through the potential additions to your collection and reject some while adding others? This is curation! Let me know in the comments what little museum gallery you are constructing online.

-Christine Cavalier