Keynote: Crowdsourcing our cultural heritage, Nordiske Arkivdage 2015

Photo of the audience arriving at Nordiske Arkivdage 2015
The audience arriving at Nordiske Arkivdage 2015

I was invited to give a keynote on 'Crowdsourcing our cultural heritage' at Nordiske Arkivdage 2015 (#NordiskArkiv), a triennial gathering of archivists from Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Åland in Copenhagen on May 8, 2015. I greatly enjoyed hearing about various crowdsourcing projects that state and city archives in those countries have worked on over the years (and would still love to hear more). My slides are below.

From my introduction:

Today I want to talk about why crowdsourcing creates opportunities for productive, meaningful public engagement with cultural heritage. This isn't a sales pitch – crowdsourcing is not a 'magic bullet' – but I think an investment in crowdsourcing can be repaid with impressive results in the amount of material processed, and in new relationships with our shared cultural heritage in museums, libraries, universities, community groups and archives.

So in the next twenty minutes I will briefly explain what crowdsourcing in cultural heritage is, give you a glimpse of some projects where crowdsourcing has been incredibly productive, and discuss how it can help make collections more accessible while engaging people more deeply in thinking about those collections…

Crowdsourcing in cultural heritage asks the public to help with tasks that contribute to a shared, significant goal or research interest related to cultural heritage collections or knowledge. As a voluntary activity, the tasks and/or goals should be inherently rewarding.

If you're interested in engagement through crowdsourcing, you might also like From tagging to theorizing: deepening engagement with cultural heritage through crowdsourcing. Curator: The Museum Journal, 56(4) pp. 435–450. If you're interested in crowdsourcing in cultural heritage generally, try the book! My Introduction to Crowdsourcing Our Cultural Heritage is online.

Keynote 'Enriching cultural heritage collections through a Participatory Commons' at Sharing is Caring

Photo of glider plane against blue sky
Image: Library of Congress

I was invited to Copenhagen to talk about my research on crowdsourcing in cultural heritage at the 3rd international Sharing is Caring seminar on April 1. I've posted my notes on Open Objects: Enriching cultural heritage collections through a Participatory Commons platform: a provocation about collaborating with users.

Much of this comes from my PhD research and my previous work in museums, and I'm grateful to everyone who's commented in person or on twitter so far, particularly as it helps me understand the best ways to explain the Participatory Commons and the research underlying it for different audiences.