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)