crowdsourcing as public engagement
TRANSCRIPT
Crowdsourcing as Public Engagement
Alastair Dunning Digitisation Programme Manager
20th September 2011
Ithaka Sustainable Scholarship Conference, New York
Crowdsourcing as Public Engagement
@alastairdunning
a.dunning (AT) jisc.ac.uk
http://www.slideshare.net/xcia0069/crowdsourcing-as-public-engagement
JISC – Network, Services, Innovation, Includes Content (http://www.jisc-content.ac.uk)
imagine ten thousand members of the
general public outside the entrance to your
library ....
qualms?maybe.
but you would not just dismiss them
out of hand
this is crowdsourcing/community content.
about how we engage public(s) with collections,
research, online resources
contributions to the oxford english dictionary
http://www.flickr.com/photos/adventuresinlibrarianship/500218879/
wikipedia - a massive crowdsourcing project
Since 2008, Australian digitised newspapers invited transcriptions, very popular
with local and family
historians – 47,168,258 lines of c.3m pages of
newspapers corrected
eBird since 2002 –
1.5m observations
in one month!
World Archives Project - Commercial publishers involved
in crowdsourcing as well
91,000 contributors.
98.4 million records indexed
how do you engage publics in some of the
academy’s most boring and labourious tasks?
engaging, slick interfaces, innovative
games, and good communications will help exploit public(s)
interest
exploit?
• exploit?• do we want users
exploited?• will they get bored?• how do we sustain
their interest?
“it will be essential to avoid developing
intellectual capital from others’ resources without
helping them to grow their cultural capital.”
hmm. what project do this?
volunteers have their own timescales
sustaining that engagement via
recognition
need to think of crowdsourcing as part of
larger public engagement mission;
not a single project but culturally embedded
universities, cultural heritage institutions, and
other related bodies need
to ...
• increase numbers• raise awareness
• inform, but listen and respond
• get donations• create community
cohesion
those ten thousand cataloguers are part of
your broader remit. And maybe helpful for more than cataloguing
References
JISC (http://www.jisc.ac.uk) and portal to JISC Content (http://www.jisc-content.ac.uk/)
Trove – Australian Newspapers - http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper
eBird - http://ebird.org/
Leaf Watch (Conkers) - http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/conker-tree-science-leaf-watch/id445371129?mt=8
World Archives Project - http://community.ancestry.com/wap
fold.it - http://fold.it/
Digital Koot - http://www.digitalkoot.fi/en
Digitisation, Curation and Two Way Engagement
RunCoCo - http://projects.oucs.ox.ac.uk/runcoco/
Great War Archive - http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/gwa/
http://www.europeana1914-1918.eu/en
Sources of Big Numbers
Wikipedia – Wikimedia Strategic Plan up to 2015, p 4-8
Trove – Trove Statistics (as of 14th September 2011)
eBird – About eBird (accessed 14th September 2011)
World Archives Project – Public Tweet (14th September 2011)