The Curator Code: Systemizing Attribution For Online Content

Everyone who has had an elementary school education knows you have to cite  your sources when conducting research. When I was in grade school, my sources were a physical set of encyclopedias available in my school’s library, and if I had a laid back teacher, the multimedia encyclopedia Encarta. Early in college I was allowed to use Wikipedia as a source for my journalism classes but had to be subtle about it. Years later, the attribution of sources and copyright issues have plagued bloggers and social platforms on a regular basis. In the past week, Pinterest has had their legal terms and conditions questioned since by its nature, Pinterest encourages people to share images and videos they don’t necessarily own – and not everyone is making sure what they pin is properly sourced.

Maria Popova,  Atlantic contributor, the author of Brainpickings, and one of the web’s foremost experts on the art of curation according to The Atlantic, is launching The Curator’s Code, a system to “honor and standardize the attribution of discovery across the web.”