Choosy crowds and the machine age: challenges for the future of humanities crowdsourcing
Citizen Humanities Comes of Age: Crowdsourcing for the Humanities in the 21st Century
King’s College London, September 2015
Mia Ridge, Open University@mia_out http://miaridge.com
Crowdsourcing in cultural heritage is...
...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.
Motivations as guidance
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)
State Library of New South Waleshttps://www.flickr.com/photos/29454428@N08/2880982738
Mobiles and tablets
http://familysearch.org/
The growth of platforms
Technology isn't enough
https://www.flickr.com/photos/missouristatearchives/20329587543/
Compete or collaborate?
http://www.hover.com/blog/what-ever-happened-to-webrings/
#party host
https://www.flickr.com/photos/nlireland/5786204856
Choosy crowds
Window shopping
https://www.flickr.com/photos/twm_news/6841092248
Balancing acts
https://www.flickr.com/photos/statelibraryofnsw/3072281873
Going off-piste
'...None of the above is ready to send to you as I have more research to do'
https://www.flickr.com/photos/swedish_heritage_board/10207262464
Planning a graceful exithttps://www.flickr.com/photos/fylkesarkiv/4545543824
Task ecosystems
http://buildinginspector.nypl.org/
Simple tasks as stepping stones
http://www.fossilfinder.org/
http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/05/21/408234543/will-your-job-be-done-by-a-machine
Machine learning
Handwritten text recognition
Transcribing and tagging audio
Robot journalists
http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/05/20/406484294/an-npr-reporter-raced-a-machine-to-write-a-news-story-who-won
Flickr's image tagging
The end of stepping stone tasks?
https://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/
Robots can get it wrong
We won't run out of material soon
https://www.flickr.com/photos/statensarkiver/8975684427
We can go further together
PCF Image Recognition
Help create niche projects
Better task validation
https://www.flickr.com/photos/nationalarchives/4128460122
Personalised feedback
New tasks
http://crowdsourced.micropasts.org/project/photomaskingLunula
Better heuristics
https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/14780537354/
Keep learning, keep sharing!
Citizen Humanities Comes of Age: Crowdsourcing for the Humanities in the 21st Century
King’s College London, September 2015
Mia Ridge, Open University@mia_out http://miaridge.com