Crowdsourcing in the Cultural Sector:approaches, challenges and issues

Mia Ridge, @mia_outDigital Curator, British Library

Crowd-sourcing, Co-creation and Co-curation in the Cultural SectorScottish Network on Digital Cultural Resources Evaluation

Glasgow, December 2015

Overview

What is crowdsourcing?

Crowdsourcing (Jeff Howe and Mark Robinson, Wired, 2006): 'taking a function once performed by employees and outsourcing it to an undefined (and generally large) network of people in the form of an open call'

Or, as Clay Shirky's cognitive surplus, 'the spare processing power of millions of human brains‘Or, simply, volunteering online

Crowdsourcing in cultural heritage

Asking the public to help with tasks that contribute to a shared, significant goal or research interest related to cultural heritage collections or knowledge.

The activities and/or goals should be inherently rewarding.

http://museumgam.es

• 19th Century natural history collecting

• 1849 Smithsonian weather observation project

• 1857, 1879 Oxford English Dictionary appeals

•WWII Soldiers given a Field Collector's Manual in Natural History by the US Museum of Natural History

James Murray, editor, OED, with contributor slips https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:James-Murray.jpg

Crowdsourcing before the web

Examples

reCAPTCHA

Trove: OCR correction

http://trove.nla.gov.au/

Your Paintings Tagger

Old Weather: structured transcription

http://oldweather.org/

Letters of 1916: full-text transcription

British Library: Georeferencer

http://www.bl.uk/maps/

British Library Sound Maps: collecting

Your accents http://sounds.bl.uk/Sound-Maps/Your-Accentshttp://sounds.bl.uk/Sound-Maps/UK-Soundmap

Year of the Bay: history mysteries

http://yearofthebay.org/

http://freebmd.org.uk/

FreeBMD: grassroots transcription

And so to...

Participatory project models

Contributory The public contributes data to a project designed

by the organisationCollaborative

Public and organisation are active partners, but project is lead by the organisation

Co-creative All partners define goals together

(Bonney et al, 2009,Center for Advancement of Informal Science Education (CAISE)

New approaches

New tasks

http://crowdsourced.micropasts.org/project/photomaskingLunula

Simple tasks as stepping stones

http://www.fossilfinder.org/

Task ecosystems

http://buildinginspector.nypl.org/

The growth of platforms

Challenges and issues

Mobiles and tablets

http://familysearch.org/

#party host

https://www.flickr.com/photos/nlireland/5786204856

Hosting crowds

Window shopping

https://www.flickr.com/photos/twm_news/6841092248

Going off-piste

'...None of the above is ready to send to you as I have more research to do'

https://www.flickr.com/photos/swedish_heritage_board/10207262464

Balancing acts

https://www.flickr.com/photos/statelibraryofnsw/3072281873

Planning a graceful exithttps://www.flickr.com/photos/fylkesarkiv/4545543824

Thank you!Questions?

Mia Ridge @mia_outDigital Curator, British Library

‘Crowdsourcing in the Cultural Sector: approaches, challenges and issues’Crowd-sourcing, Co-creation and Co-curation in the Cultural Sector

Scottish Network on Digital Cultural Resources Evaluation

https://www.flickr.com/photos/nationalarchives/4128460122

Personalised feedback

Better heuristics

https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/14780537354/