In the digital era we live in, users can access an abundance of digital resources in their daily life. These digital resources can be located on the user's devices, in traditional repositories such as intranets or digital libraries, but also in open environments such as the World Wide Web.
To be able to efficiently work with this abundance of information, users need support to get access to the resources that are relevant to them. Access to digital resources can be supported in various ways. Whether we talk about technologies for browsing, searching, filtering, ranking, or recommending resources: what they all have in common is that they depend on the available information (i.e., resources and metadata). The accessibility of digital resources that meet a user's information need, and the existence and quality of metadata is crucial for the success of any information system.
This work focuses on how social media technologies can support the access to digital resources. In contrast to closed and controlled environments where only selected users have the rights to contribute digital resources and metadata, and where this contribution involves a social process of formal agreement of the relevant stakeholders, potentially any user can easily create and provide information in social media environments. This usually leads to a larger variety of resources and metadata, and allows for dynamics that would otherwise hardly be possible.
Most information systems still mainly rely on traditional top-down approaches where only selected stakeholders can contribute information. The main idea of this thesis is an approach that allows for introducing the characteristics of social media environments in such traditional contexts. The requirements for such an approach are being examined, as well as the benefits and potentials it can provide.
The ALOE infrastructure was developed according to the identified requirements and realises a Social Resource and Metadata Hub. Case studies and evaluation results are provided to show the impact of the approach on the user's behaviours and the creation of digital resources and metadata, and to justify the presented approach.