Collecting Shoreline’s Tree Campus

Abstract:Collective intelligence occurs when a group of users pool the result of their research and their shared information in a wiki-like online space. In this case, a LibGuide with many users provides information for a tree tour on a community college campus where students and community members in a group contribute both informational facts and creative writing, poetry, and cultural data about the trees and plants. The trees represent one collection, while the online space has become another bottom-up-led collection created collaboratively with the emphasis on promoting sustainability in the form of economics, environment, and equity. Tree Campus is a project started at Shoreline Community College to encourage the community to engage with sustainability themes from an arts, humanities, and scientific perspective by taking tours on campus to view the plants and trees. Many of the flora are native to the Seattle area and meaningful to Native American cultures, which is communicated through the online LibGuides created and maintained by students in the Shoreline Community College Economics Research Group (SCCERG) and supported by the Sustainable Commuter Options Fee (SCOF) committee.