Greater good, empowerment and democratization? Affordances of the crowdsourcing transcription projects

Digital technology and Internet access have created new possibilities for museums and archives for digitization of their collections. Steadily, more museums are experimenting with inviting their audiences to participate in tagging images, annotating, transcribing historical texts or cropping photographs. This article is an exploration of visual and functional aspects of various digital interfaces frequently being used in crowdsourcing projects involving transcribing manuscripts. The empirical material has been collected through interviews with the editors of the projects and systematic technical walkthroughs of MediaWiki platforms (Edvard Munch’s Writings and Transcribe Bentham) and Zooniverse platforms (AnnoTate and Shakespeare’s World). The analysis aims to explore platforms’ affordances (Gibson 1978), in other words the opportunities that the layout and design offer to users interacting with facsimiles of manuscripts (‘digital networked objects’) (Cameron and Mengler 2015). The questions raised are whether and how the interfaces empower users and perform as a democratic actor providing the volunteers with agency. The platforms’ interfaces have emerged as an important and undervalued actor-network of elements which configure heterogeneous relations among actors and influence users’ engagement

Crowdsourcing in the Digital Humanities

As Web 2.0 technologies changed the World Wide Web from a read-only to a co-creative digital experience, a range of commercial and non-commercial platforms emerged to allow online users to contribute to discussions and use their knowledge, experience, and time to build online content. Alongside the widespread success of collaboratively produced resources such as Wikipedia came a movement in the cultural and heritage sectors to trial crowdsourcing - the harnessing of online activities and behaviour to aid in large-scale ventures such as tagging, commenting, rating, reviewing, text correcting, and the creation and uploading of content in a methodical, task-based fashion (Holley 2010) - to improve the quality of, and widen access to, online collections. Building on this, within Digital Humanities there have been attempts to crowdsource more complex tasks traditionally assumed to be carried out by academic scholars: such as the accurate transcription of manuscript material. This chapter aims to survey the growth and uptake of crowdsourcing for culture and heritage, and more specifically, within Digital Humanities. It raises issues of public engagement and asks how the use of technology to involve and engage a wider audience with tasks that have been the traditional purview of academics can broaden the scope and appreciation of humanistic enquiry. Finally, it asks what this increasingly common public-facing activity means for Digital Humanities itself, as the success of these projects demonstrates the effectiveness of building projects for, and involving, a wide online audience

Disruptive Innovative Library Services @ international Nalanda University: Present and Future Roadmaps

This paper discusses innovative technologies that have implemented at international Nalanda University, Rajgir, Bihar, India and also planning to implement some other advanced tools and technologies in future. The Nalanda University is an avant-garde International University, a truly “sui generis” supported by 17 partner countries of the East Asia Summit. The Government of India designates it as an “Institution of National Importance” under the Ministry of External Affairs. The Nalanda University envisions its library to be the central fulcrum of its master plan, both in terms of its design and bearing. This paper explains in details the services which are categorized into five different areas such as (1) Infrastructure (2) Collection Development (3) Emerging Tools and Technologies (4) Research Support Service (5) Other Social Responsible Activities. Under the “Infrastructure” this paper enumerates in details about the good ambience for best study environment for the users to attract towards the library; illustrates various types of resources, setting up a Common Archival Resource Centre (CARC) and Digitization of Nalanda’s Discovery under “Collection Development”; and also explains various types of “Emerging Tools and Technologies” to reach out the to the users such as Integrated Library Management System (ILMS), Customized Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC), Web-scale Discovery Service (WSDS), Library Portal, Remote Access and Single Sign-on, Institutional Repository, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), A to Z Link and Open URL Link Resolver, Cloud Computing, Electronic Resource Management System (ERMS), Course Reserve, M Library, Content Management System (CMS), Google’s Custom Search Engine (GCS), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality (VR) & Augmented Reality (AR), Gesture-based Computing, Crowdsourcing, QR Code, Internet of Thing (IoT), Popular Aisles, Library Utensils, 3D Printer, Library Wearable, Learning Management Systems, Web 2.0, and MakerSpace. This paper also explains in details Information and Reference Services, Reference Management Tool, Citation database, Thesis and Dissertation, Scholarly Archive, Anti-plagiarism Tool, Academic Writing, Personalized Research ID, Data and Visualization Service, Copyright and IPR issues, Information Alerts on Core and Allied Subjects under “Research Support Service”. It also elucidates in details about “Other Social Responsibilities Activities” such as Mobile Library Service, Workshops for local communities, Libraries in Jails, Competitive Examinations Centr

Evolutionary Subject Tagging in the Humanities; Supporting Discovery and Examination in Digital Cultural Landscapes

In this paper, the authors attempt to identify problematic issues for subject tagging in the humanities, particularly those associated with information objects in digital formats. In the third major section, the authors identify a number of assumptions that lie behind the current practice of subject classification that we think should be challenged. We move then to propose features of classification systems that could increase their effectiveness. These emerged as recurrent themes in many of the conversations with scholars, consultants, and colleagues. Finally, we suggest next steps that we believe will help scholars and librarians develop better subject classification systems to support research in the humanities.NEH Office of Digital Humanities: Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant (HD-51166-10

Making digital history: The impact of digitality on public participation and scholarly practices in historical research

This thesis investigates tow key questions: firstly, how do two broad groups - academic, family and local historians, and the public - evaluate, use, and contribute to digital history resources? And consequently, what impact have digital technologies had on public participation and scholarly practices in historical research? Analysing the impact of design on participant experiences and the reception of digital historiography by demonstrating the value of methods drawn from human-computer interaction, including heuristic evaluation, trace ethnography and semi-structured interviews. This thesis also investigates the relationship between heritage crowdsourcing projects (which ask the public to help with meaningful, inherently rewarding tasks that contribute to a shared, significant goal or research interest related to cultural heritage collections or knowledge) and the development of historical skills and interests. It situates crowdsourcing and citizen history within the broader field of participatory digital history and then focuses on the impact of digitality on the research practices of faculty and community historians. Chapter 1 provides an overview of over 400 digital history projects aimed at engaging the public or collecting, creating or enhancing records about historical materials for scholarly and general audiences. Chapter 2 discusses design factors that may influence the success of crowdsourcing projects. Following this, Chapter 3 explores the ways in which some crowdsourcing projects encourage deeper engagement with history or science, and the role of communities of practice in citizen history. Chapter 4 shifts our focus from public participation to scholarly practices in historical research, presenting the results of interviews conducted with 29 faculty and community historians. Finally, the Conclusion draws together the threads that link public participation and scholarly practices, teasing out the ways in which the practices of discovering, gathering, creating and sharing historical materials and knowledge have been affected by digital methods, tools and resources

Cultural institutions and Web 2.0

This report gives the results of an exploratory survey of the approaches that Australian cultural institutions are implementing to meet Web 2.0 challenges. For the purpose of this study cultural institutions are those organizations open to the general public that house information artefacts representative of national culture, namely galleries, museums, libraries and archives. The aim was to undertake a brief survey of the strategies being implemented by Australian cultural institutions to come to terms with Web 2.0 development, and meet challenges. This has been complemented by some consideration of management and technical issues that have been reported in the literature. The work leads to some findings that should inform both the institutions and the Australian research and development community of issues and opportunities relating to enhanced provision of access to Australian cultural heritage

Evolutionary Subject Tagging in the Humanities

Interdisciplinary research in the humanities requires indexing that represents multiple disciplinary perspectives. Most literature has been indexed using traditional models for subject analysis that are either too broad to be helpful or represent a single disciplinary perspective. We question whether traditional print models of subject analysis serve humanistic researchers' needs in working with digital content. It is beyond the capacity of libraries to re-index this body of literature relying on human indexers. We need to develop scalable tools to both re-index extant bodies of literature and newly created literature. Web-scale searching, computational text analysis, and automated indexing each hold promise for addressing various aspects of the problem, but none seem to fully address the problem. This project will gather a group of scholars with expertise in the humanities, computational analysis of texts, and library and information science, to design an approach to the problem

Social Innovation in a Digital Context.

This book summarizes the project work of the very first batch of participants of Lund University’s international Social Innovation in a Digital Context programme, financed by the Swedish Institute. The programme targets human rights activists in a position from which they can initiate projects of change in their home countries in the area of social innovation. During the programme all participants initiate a change project using the knowledge and skills obtained during the programme and using digital technology. This book contains reports on projects aimed at creating sociopolitical improvement in Algeria, Gaza, Iraq, Jordan, Syria and Tunisia