#curration

There is a proud tradition of extracting lines from poetry and songs and using them in this way. And for centuries, people have kept “commonplace books”: journals filled with transcriptions of quotes and extracts. But not everyone is a fan of cherry-picking odd passages from random books and using them to direct your life. Some people argue that lines from novels and plays are dependent on the context that surrounds them—that it’s unseemly and self-serving to grab the odd line here and there, especially if it comes in the voice of a character and may not have anything to do with what the writer thinks. I don’t buy this. It ignores the way that your brain collects, refracts, sorts, and combines information. Our search for meaning isn’t limited to thoughts that were created to be meaningful and packaged in verse or easily extractable chunks. We can find meaning in everything—and everything is fair game. Your brain is, in fact, the ultimate commonplace collection, and everything you’ve ever read is in there somewhere, ready to come back into your consciousness when you want or need it. 

So I spend my life collecting books and sentences from them: books I’ve sought alongside ones I’ve stumbled across, and sentences I’ve forced into my brain through rote memorization alongside ones that just found their way in by themselves. 

At home, I’m a librarian, forever curating my collection. Outside of my apartment, I’m a bookseller—hand-selling my favorite books to everyone I encounter.

There’s a name for someone who behaves the way I do: Reader.

maybe posting this will help my tumblr be more currated?

While creating your own content weekly is an activity everyone should be doing, it’s also important to currate content from others and share links.

This week I review sniply a great place to reference other people's content on the web. In snip.ly’s own words:

There are three basic components to Sniply: (1) the page you want your message to appear on, (2) the message you want to appear on the page, and (3) the call-to-action that leads to a conversion.

Many successful websites content consists of 50% of other people’s content. This means that 50% of the visitors are potentially clicking away from their website.

To learn more about sniply and to see it in action with my branding message included, click the link below.