What Can You Do With Crowdsourced Digitization?

What can crowdsourcing do for the Digital Humanities?

Crowdsourcing only bears fruit for “cultural heritage” projects if it fulfills two criteria. First, the task assigned to the general public must be based on observation, not interpretation. Astronomers have located new stars with the public’s help by telling us what to look for, and our telling them whether we’ve seen it. Some grey areas will appear; but they need only be marked as such, not examined. Second, there must be some review mechanism in place to vet and when necessary correct the output. Wikipedia has built a sprawling hierarchy of editors not because Jimmy Wales wanted to. And the same applies to DH crowdsourcing. Researchers must ensure prior to liftoff that their review process will take less time than the crowdsourced work did. Otherwise why bother.

What do successful crowdsourcing projects do to attract and retain contributors?

Successful crowdsourcing is predicated on attracting users and retaining them. To attract, researchers must make their project (a) visually and conceptually attractive, (b) easy interface, and (c) ready to export via social media. A model for both aspects is the New York Public Library’s Building Inspector. Critical to the project’s success is first, its unmatched graphics, which blow insurance maps up to fill a full laptop window or phone screen. Second, the graphics come with a very small box of tools, accompanied by an entertaining video to explain their use. Third, as the project’s own online debut noted, “the Webapp works and looks great as a mobile app.” What had been a desktop job thus becomes a subway platform and doctor’s office  job.  A fourth and final consideration is that users must feel that their time is worth something. The best reward, research suggests, lies in the message. If contributors are reminded of the project’s purpose and dynamism–dynamic in its evolution toward that purpose–then they are that much more likely to keep at it.