Category: presentation

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Seminar: 'Crowdsourcing 101: Fundamentals and Case Studies'

The Crowdsourcing Consortium for Libraries and Archives (CCLA) organised an online seminar on Crowdsourcing 101: Fundamentals and Case Studies. I was invited to present an overview of 'fundamentals' in crowdsourcing in cultural heritage, including examples of successful projects, typical data input and output types, common tasks, and ways to think motivations for participation and levels of engagement. From the OCLC's page:

'This webinar will explore crowdsourcing techniques used increasingly by organizations and institutions seeking to gather vast amounts of new knowledge and participation from online contributors.

Crowdsourcing techniques are increasingly being utilized by organizations and institutions—including libraries and museums—seeking to gather vast amounts of new knowledge and participation from online contributors. In this fast-paced hour-long introduction, you'll get a handle on "Crowdsourcing Fundamentals" from leading voice in the field Mia Ridge, along with first-person accounts from two exemplar crowdsourcing projects (NYPL, Zooniverse). Learn the basics about implementing crowdsourcing techniques, securing funding, engaging users, and assessing the quality of crowdsourced data, as well as the advantages and challenges of utilizing crowdsourcing.

This webinar is part of the newly formed Crowdsourcing Consortium for Libraries and Archives (CCLA). Funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the goal of CCLA is to forge national/international partnerships to advance the use of crowdsourcing technologies, tools, user experiences, and platforms to help libraries, museums, archives, and more.'

Slides, video and chat notes are available on the OCLC's page.

If you found this post useful, you might be interested in my book, Crowdsourcing Our Cultural Heritage.

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Conference paper: Where is the revolution in citizen history? The place of crowdsourcing in public history

I gave a paper asking 'Where is the revolution in citizen history? The place of crowdsourcing in public history' at the IFPH-FIHP International Conference 'Public History in a Digital World: The Revolution Reconsidered', in Amsterdam 23-25 October 2014 #IFPH2014.

My paper was based on my PhD research so I won't share my notes until after I've submitted my thesis, but here's my proposal:

When the term 'citizen history' was used in a 2011 blog post about the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Children of the Lodz Ghetto project, which asked members of the public to investigate specific tightly defined research questions,[1] it seemed to herald a new participatory movement in public history. Citizen history is the use of digital platforms to distribute, coordinate and validate contributions by members of the public to historic research projects. The complexity of the task and the level of public involvement ranges from simple contributions through crowdsourced observation, transcription or categorisation tasks to independent research on set questions, or even co-defining the research question in co-created projects.[2] Through this active engagement with historical material, some crowdsourcing contributors become citizen historians as they develop an interest in researching the histories of the individuals, events or places they have encountered during participatory tasks.

But despite the promise of crowdsourcing as a form of active engagement with history, this potential revolution in public history may have stalled. Non-heritage sector organisations like Ancestry and FamilySearch are working with museums, archives and libraries to digitise and transcribe records relevant to family historians, and most of the major citizen history projects are based on software created for scientific crowdsourcing, while public history projects seem to follow traditional broadcast and exhibition-based models.

Based on a critical analysis of existing history crowdsourcing and participatory public history projects, this short paper will ask why public history projects are not actively engaging the public in making history.

 

If you found this post useful, you might be interested in my book, Crowdsourcing Our Cultural Heritage.

[1] Elissa Frankle, “More Crowdsourced Scholarship: Citizen History,” Center for the Future of Museums, July 28, 2011,http://futureofmuseums.blogspot.com/2011/07/more-crowdsourced-scholarship-citizen.html

[2] Bonney, Rick, Heidi Ballard, Rebecca Jordan, Ellen McCallie, Tina Phillips, Jenifer Shirk, and Candie C. Wilderman. Public Participation in Scientific Research: Defining the Field and Assessing Its Potential for Informal Science Education. A CAISE Inquiry Group Report. Washington D.C.: Center for Advancement of Informal Science Education (CAISE), July 2009. https://web.archive.org/web/20130216071947/http://caise.insci.org/uploads/docs/PPSR%20report%20FINAL.pdf.

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Conference paper: Play as Process and Product: On Making Serendip-o-matic

The abstract for our Digital Humanities 2014 conference paper is below. Scott's posted his notes from the first part, my notes for the middle part How did 'play' shape the design and experience of creating Serendip-o-matic? are on Open Objects and Brian's are to follow.

Play as Process and Product: On Making Serendip-o-matic

Amy Papaelias, State University of New York at New Paltz

Brian Croxall, Emory University

Mia Ridge, The Open University

Scott Kleinman, California State University, Northridge

Summary

Animated gif of a green cartoon hippopotamus with a speech bubble saying 'feeding the machine'

Who says scholarship can't be playful? Serendip-o-matic is a "serendipity engine" that was created in less than a week by twelve digital humanities scholars, developers, and librarians. Designed to replicate the surprising experience of discovering an unexpected source while browsing library stacks or working in an archive, the visual and algorithmic design of Serendip-o-matic emphasizes playfulness. And since the tool was built by a group of people who were embarking on a difficult task but weren't yet sure of one another's names, the process of building Serendip-o-matic was also rather playful, encouraging participants to take risks, make mistakes, and learn something new. In this presentation, we report on how play shaped the creation, design, and marketing of Serendip-o-matic. We conclude by arguing for the benefits of more playful work in academic research and scholarship, as well as considering how such "play" can be evaluated in an academic context.

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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.

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'Creating a Digital History Commons through crowdsourcing and participant digitisation' at Herrenhausen DH Conference

screenshot of poster
Creating a Digital History Commons through
crowdsourcing and participant digitisation

I was awarded a travel grant to attend the Herrenhausen Conference: "(Digital) Humanities Revisited – Challenges and Opportunities in the Digital Age" in Hannover, Germany, over December 5-7, 2013. I'd like to thank the Volkswagen Foundation (VolkswagenStiftung) for funding travel for 37 early career scholars and for the opportunity to present there.

My lightning talk notes, further information and references for 'Peer production models for academic and amateur historians: challenges and opportunities' are below. Obviously the full reference list for my PhD would be huge so below I've selected items that relate specifically to my poster and talk. PDF of my poster on 'Creating a Digital History Commons through crowdsourcing and participant digitisation'.
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