The concept of "Curation" has rapidly moved from museums to mainstream media. As the sheer volume of Tweets, Likes, Blogs, YouTube videos, and emails overwhelm the web, publishers and brands are increasingly being asked to provide a human face to content organization and editorial curation. With the right framework, curation can be a powerful tool to help editorial meet new challenges.

'A terrific and important book . . . it's a great, fresh take on how the 21st century is transforming the way we select everything from food to music' David Bodanis, author of E=MC2 In the past two years humanity has produced more data than the rest of human history combined. We carry a library of data in our pockets, accessible at any second. We have more information and more goods at our disposal than we know what to do with. There is no longer any competitive advantage in creating more information. Today, value lies in curation: selecting, finding and cutting down to show what really matters. Curation reveals how a little-used word from the world of museums became a crucial and at times controversial strategy for the twenty-first century. Today's most successful companies - Apple, Netflix, Amazon - have used curation to power their growth, by offering customers more tailored and appropriate choices. Curation answers the question of how we can live and prosper in an age of information overload. In the context of excess, it is not only a sound business strategy, but a way to make sense of the world.

Business Leaders Are Buzzing About Curation Nation “An indispensible guide to the brave new media world.” —Arianna Huffington, editor in chief, the Huffington Post “Gives me hope for the future of the Information Age. Rosenbaum argues for the growing importance of people—creative, smart, hip—who can spot trends, find patterns, and make meaning out of the flood of data that threatens to overwhelm us.” —Daniel H. Pink, New York Times bestselling author of Drive “A testament to the strategic mind of a genius and a road map for developing engaging consumer experiences by curating content around your brand.” —Bonin Bough, Global Director, Digital and Social Media, PepsiCo “Perfectly on-trend—an insightful guide to the future. So entertaining you won’t put it down.” —Chris Meyer, author of Blur “Read this book. Embrace curation, and you’ll be ready to ‘crush it’ with focus and passion in the noisy new world of massive data overload.” —Gary Vaynerchuk, New York Times bestselling author of Crush It “Provides a wealth of real-world examples of how businesses can use the Web to give their customers a valuable curated experience.” —Tony Hsieh, CEO, Zappos.com, and New York Times bestselling author of Delivering Happiness “Our best hope for sorting the good from the mediocre in our increasingly overwhelming media landscape.” —Clay Shirky, author of Cognitive Surplus and Here Comes Everybody About the Book: Let’s face it, we’re drowning in data. Our inboxes are flooded with spam, we have too many “friends” on Facebook, and our Twitter accounts have become downright unmanageable. Creating content is easy; finding what matters is hard. Fortunately, there is a new magic that makes the Web work. It’s called curation, and it enables people to sort through the digital excess and find what’s relevant. In Curation Nation, Steven Rosenbaum reveals why brands, publishers, and content entrepreneurs must embrace aggregation and curation to grow an existing business or launch a new one. In fact, he asserts that curation is the only way to be competitive in the future. Overwhelmed by too much content, people are hungry for an experience that both takes advantage of the Web’s breadth and depth and provides a measure of human sorting and filtering that search engines simply can’t achieve. In these shifting sands lies an extraordinary business opportunity: you can become a trusted source of value in an otherwise meaningless chaos of digital noise. In Curation Nation, Rosenbaum “curates the curators” by gathering together priceless insight and advice from the top thinkers in media, advertising, publishing, commerce, and Web technologies. This groundbreaking book levels the playing field, giving your business equal access to the content abundance presently driving consumer adoption of the Web. As the sheer volume of digital information in the world increases, the demand for quality and context becomes more urgent. Curation will soon be a part of your business and your digital world. Understand it now, join in early, and reap the many benefits Curation Nation has to offer. Learn more at CurationNation.org.

We used to live in a knowledge economy. No longer. With the speed and scale of change in our world today, knowing is not enough: we must constantly be learning. In 10 Ways to Be a Better Learner, Jeff Cobb shows you how to take charge of your learning and turn the challenges of our hyper-connected, information-overloaded world into opportunities for growing and improving. Whether you are trying to advance in your career, or simply want to build new knowledge and skills to enrich your life, this is the book for you. Grounded in research, but practical in its application, 10 Ways to Be a Better Learner is a quick read that delivers high impact. About the Author: Jeff Cobb is the founder of the Mission to Learn blog, co-author of Shift Ed: A Call to Action for Transforming K-12 Education (Corwin, 2011) and author of the forthcoming Leading the Learning Revolution (AMACOM, 2012).

Now that we ‘curate’ even lunch, what happens to the role of the connoisseur in contemporary culture?

Archives and special collections departments have a long history of preserving and providing long-term access to organizational records, rare books, and other unique primary sources including manuscripts, photographs, recordings, and artifacts in various formats. The careful curatorial attention to such records has also ensured that such records remain available to researchers and the public as sources of knowledge, memory, and identity. Digital curation presents an important framework for the continued preservation of digitized and born-digital collections, given the ephemeral and device-dependent nature of digital content. With the emergence of analog and digital media formats in close succession (compared to earlier paper- and film-based formats) came new standards, technologies, methods, documentation, and workflows to ensure safe storage and access to content and associated metadata. Researchers in the digital humanities have extensively applied computing to research; for them, continued access to primary data and cultural heritage means both the continuation of humanities scholarship and new methodologies not possible without digital technology. Digital Curation in the Digital Humanities, therefore, comprises a joint framework for preserving, promoting, and accessing digital collections. This book explores at great length the conceptualization of digital curation projects with interdisciplinary approaches that combine the digital humanities and history, information architecture, social networking, and other themes for such a framework. The individual chapters focus on the specifics of each area, but the relationships holding the knowledge architecture and the digital curation lifecycle model together remain an overarching theme throughout the book; thus, each chapter connects to others on a conceptual, theoretical, or practical level. - Theoretical and practical perspectives on digital curation in the digital humanities and history - In-depth study of the role of social media and a social curation ecosystem - The role of hypertextuality and information architecture in digital curation - Study of collaboration and organizational dimensions in digital curation - Reviews of important web tools in digital humanities

Discover the essential thinking tools you’ve been missing with The Great Mental Models series by Shane Parrish, New York Times bestselling author and the mind behind the acclaimed Farnam Street blog and “The Knowledge Project” podcast. This first book in the series is your guide to learning the crucial thinking tools nobody ever taught you. Time and time again, great thinkers such as Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett have credited their success to mental models–representations of how something works that can scale onto other fields. Mastering a small number of mental models enables you to rapidly grasp new information, identify patterns others miss, and avoid the common mistakes that hold people back. The Great Mental Models: Volume 1, General Thinking Concepts shows you how making a few tiny changes in the way you think can deliver big results. Drawing on examples from history, business, art, and science, this book details nine of the most versatile, all-purpose mental models you can use right away to improve your decision making and productivity. This book will teach you how to: Avoid blind spots when looking at problems. Find non-obvious solutions. Anticipate and achieve desired outcomes. Play to your strengths, avoid your weaknesses, … and more. The Great Mental Models series demystifies once elusive concepts and illuminates rich knowledge that traditional education overlooks. This series is the most comprehensive and accessible guide on using mental models to better understand our world, solve problems, and gain an advantage.