Download - Crowdsourcing and Cultural Heritage workshop
Crowdsourcing and Cultural Heritage
Mia Ridge, @mia_outDigital Curator, British Library
Fondren Library, Rice University, 7 March 2016
Hands up!
• Do you work with: – Text– Images– Audio/video– Objects– Stories / memories / knowledge?
• Does your mission include education, outreach or engagement?
• Does you work with volunteers? Students?
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.
Basically...
Transforming input content into output content ...via a powerful purpose and / or enjoyable
tasks that people want to help you with
Crowdsourcing and related terms
• User-generated content• Human computation• Citizen science, citizen history, citizen
humanities• Academic (e.g. humanities) crowdsourcing• Community-sourcing, nichesourcing• Cognitive surplus• 'the wisdom of crowds'
• 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
Exercise: compare front pages
Go to: http://tinyurl.com/TryCrowdsourcing
Compare pairs of sites: how good is the front page at making you want to participate in a project?
Example outputs
• Links between content (relationships)
• Ratings/Votes• Tags• Corrections• Transcriptions• Descriptions• Geo-coordinates
• Images, multimedia• Game levels• Research• Object identification• Family records• Objects, documents• Personal experiences,
memories
Why crowdsourcing in GLAMs?*
• Digitisation backlog: collections are big, resources are small
GLAMs = Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums
Why crowdsourcing in GLAMs?
• Support needs of scholarly researchers e.g. participant transcription, DIY digitisation
Why crowdsourcing in GLAMs?
• Create engaging experiences for the public, meaningful forms of participation
Why crowdsourcing in GLAMs?
• Create environments for learning skills - palaeography, classification, contextualisation, humanistic or scientific analysis
Who participates in crowdsourcing?
• People who are passionate about your subject / people who like doing the task you're offering
• Super-volunteers and lots of other people• Amateurs, professionals, 'pro-ams'• People who can't volunteer in regular hours or
at your venues
Motivations for participation
• Altruistic– helping to provide an accurate record of local
history• Intrinsic– reading 18thC handwriting is an enjoyable puzzle
or they're interested in the subject• Extrinsic– an academic collecting a quote from a primary
source
Intrinsic motivations for participation
• fun• the pleasure in doing
hobbies• the enjoyment in learning• mastering new skills,
practicing existing skills• recognition• community• passion for the subject
State Library of Queensland, Australiahttps://secure.flickr.com/photos/statelibraryqueensland/3198305152/
Motivations and Galaxy ZooI am interested in astronomy 46%
I enjoy looking at the beautiful galaxy images 16
I can meet other people with similar interests 6
I am excited to contribute to original scientific research 22
I can look at galaxies that few people have seen before 8
I had a lot of fun categorising the galaxies 11
I am happy to help 7
I find the site and forums helpful in learning about astronomy 10
I am interested in science 4
I find Galaxy Zoo to be a useful resource for teaching other people 2
I am amazed by the vast scale of the universe 24
I am interested in the Galaxy Zoo project 8
Crowdsourcing Cultural Heritage with Mia Ridge and Ben Brumfield at HILT
Motivations and Your Paintings TaggerI am interested in paintings 85.5%
I like working with people with similar interests 12.3
I am excited to be contributing to research into paintings 60.8
I can look at paintings that few people have seen before 50.5
I have fun categorising the paintings 55
I am happy to help with a national project like Your Paintings 76.3
I find Tagger helpful in learning about paintings 45.6
I find Tagger to be a useful resource for teaching other people 15.7
I am impressed by the wide range of the national collection of paintings 51.5
Crowdsourcing Cultural Heritage with Mia Ridge and Ben Brumfield at HILT
Motivations as design guide
People crave:• satisfying work to do• the experience of being
good at something• time spent with people
we like• the chance to be a part
of something bigger(Jane McGonigal, 2009)
Exercise: try projects
Go to: http://tinyurl.com/TryCrowdsourcingHow clear was the purpose of the project? • Were the steps to complete the task clear? • How enjoyable was the task? • Did the reward (if any) feel appropriate? • Did you notice any friction or barriers?• Did the site anticipate your questions about
the tasks?
Concepts for reviewing projects• The 'call to action'
– Is the first step toward participating obvious?– Is the type of task, source material and output obvious?
• Probable audience– Can you tell who the project wants to reach?– Does text trigger their motivations for starting, continuing?– How are they rewarded?– Are there any barriers to their participation?
• Data input and data produced– What kinds of tasks create that data?– How are contributions validated?
• How productive, successful overall?
Interface design for crowdsourcing
• Demonstrate a close match between the crowdsourcing project and the mission of the organisation running it
• Show, don't tell - let people see the impact of their contributions
• 'Validate procrastination' - give people an altruistic excuse to spend time on your tasks
Interface design for crowdsourcing
• Design for 'super taggers' and for people who do just one or two tasks
• Design different tasks for different contexts
Designing for motivation
• Match 'microcopy' messages to motivations• Match tasks and rewards to motivations• Anticipate which motivations might change
over course of a project
Designing for on-going participation
• Support increasing mastery• Promote participants to new skills, new roles
within project• Support emergence of a community
Design for participation
• Make it easy for people to do the right thing• Scaffold the experience: tightly defined tasks,
reduce uncertainty about quality of contribution, provide feedback on progress
Design for 'flow'
• Clear sense of goals• Feedback on progress towards goals• Skills matched to challenge• Attention focused
on task• 'in the moment'• Not worried
about external factors
Did you understand what to do?Did you want to keep playing?
Moral: start with the simplest task possible
Exercise: lessons from game design
Inspiration from casual games
• Easy-to-learn game-play• Simple controls• 'Forgiving' game-play with low risk of failure• Carefully managed complexity levels with a
shallow learning curve, guidance through early levels, and inclusive, accessible themes
• Sense of rapid progress and achievement
Inspiration from casual games
• Build any tests for skill or experience requirements into the interface
• Build tutorials for new skills into application at the point where its needed; provide good feedback on actions
Project design
• Plan to store and process results from crowdsourcing
• Allow time for community interaction and marketing
• Design projects that contribute to your engagement strategy and digitisation goals
• Release early and often (if you can)
• Reality check your plans
Marketing and outreach
• Call to action and tagline should explain what's unique about your project
• Start with what people already love and share about your collections
• Updates as outreach– Achievements, progress towards goals– Highlight participant discoveries, questions
Exercise: planning crowdsourcing
• Who already loves and/or uses your collections?• What motivates them? What rewards can you
design to match their motivations?• Which material needs what kind of work?• Do any existing platforms meet most of your needs?• What potential barriers could you turn into tasks?• How will you resource community interaction?• How would a project support your mission,
engagement strategy and digitisation goals?
Thank you!
Mia Ridge @mia_outDigital Curator, British Library
Knowledge Exchange Event & MGS Digital Transformation Network meeting, 2 December 2, 2015 The Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum