The Human Side of Digitized Knowledge: Community Curation of the Ethno-ornithology World Archive

The Ethno-ornithology World Archive (EWA) is an internet-based, public facing archive of global cultural knowledge relating to birds. EWA was initiated with financial support from an AHRC Digital Transformations in Community Research Co-Production grant with the aim of connecting 'local' communities with communities of conservation practitioners and social and biological researchers through a shared concern for the conservation of birds and cultural and linguistic diversity. To this end, the Project Partnership with BirdLife International is crucial to the design and establishment of EWA, not least because BirdLife's Local Empowerment Programme (LEP), based around 2,700 Important Bird Areas (IBAs) and associated grassroots Local Conservation Groups (LCGs) in more than 100 countries, was identified as the core user community for EWA.

Despite the continuing importance of BirdLife International in the EWA Partnership, our work in developing EWA, especially through new contacts made through conferences of the Society of Ethnobiology (SoE) and International Society of Ethnobiology (ISE) and linguists at SOAS etc. has convinced us of the need to engage with the many linguistically and culturally distinct communities that currently lie outside BirdLife's LEP (because they are not associated with an IBA), but whose engagement with EWA would be mutually beneficial. Through contacts made through the EWA project, these communities include Indigenous people across five continents. They also include urban groups in the UK and elsewhere who are often marginalised and disconnected from, and lack access to, nature. To enable the engagement with this extended community EWA needs to develop a trustworthy, robust, flexible, and responsive network of Curators worldwide. These Curators will be the key to maintaining EWA's ability to respond to diverse community needs and responsible archival strategies as this global user community grows. They will provide a knowledgeable human interface where required between EWA and their contributing communities. The proposed project aims, therefore, to develop a Curator Network for EWA to extend the reach of this archive resource to diverse communities and audiences not currently accessible through BirdLife's LEP.

EWA's scope is global, with potential outreach to all language groups; and while its value as a research tool is considerable, public and community engagement are essential to EWA's success because: a) it is an archive of publicly submitted (crowd-sourced) information that is being shared with, not donated to, a larger community through EWA; b) it aims to affirm and support local efforts in nature conservation; and c) crowd-funding will be important to maintain the archive in the long term. These concerns require the strongest ethical principles to be embodied within the modus operandi of EWA and its Curator Network to allow for varied terms of permission to submit information and to allow individuals or communities to restrict access to material that they deem to be secret or sensitive. Critically, EWA must be responsive to diverse cultural sensibilities and allow for differing degrees of community engagement consistent with individual and/or community wishes, recognising that ultimately it is their right to choose whether to share their knowledge with a wider audience.

The principal outcomes of the project will be 1) a seed network of at least 30 volunteer curators, trusted by their local communities, with expertise in global and/or local bird taxonomy, local languages, ethnobiology, local traditions and trained in the ethical use of EWA; 2) a document outlining curation management guidelines and strategy, available in several languages; 3) a digitized and translated library of Curator training materials, also multilingual; 4) an effective and scalable database for efficient Curator management; 5) research publications; and 6) the first Curator Workshop at an international conference.

The Ethno-ornithology World Archive (EWA) was conceived as a 'living archive' with high public and social impact, whose entries would require moderation. It was originally conceived that moderation would be provided through regional partners and Local Conservation Groups of BirdLife International. Whilst effective in connection with Important Bird Areas (IBAs), work on EWA indicates the need for a more broadly based Curator Network so as to connect with audiences other than those directly involved with BirdLife's conservation programmes. As well as many indigenous communities working with ethnobiologists and linguists connected through the Society of Ethnobiology and International Society of Ethnobiology, these include urban groups who are often marginalised and disconnected from nature.

Curators will provide an informed human interface between their communities and EWA. In addition, therefore, to connecting new local communities (indigenous and otherwise) to EWA, and to each other through EWA, the social and cultural impact of the Curator Network will occur at several geopolitical levels although impacts interconnect across these levels:

Locally the recognition that local knowledge is valued globally also affirms the value of that knowledge locally. Such affirmation can be critical to the key socio-cultural impact of stemming the loss of cultural knowledge. Furthermore, through helping to realise more fully EWA's goals of inclusiveness, global reach, ethical practice, and responsible oversight, the Curator Network also presents and promotes these ethical principles within their curated communities.

Nationally, through providing a voice for local communities and through the implicit valuing of their knowledge by, potentially, a global community of users, the value of local knowledge is also affirmed for national institutions, including Governments, with democratising benefits for local communities. In affirming the value of local ethno-ornithological knowledge at a national level, potential is created especially for social and cultural impact within the education and conservation agencies of those countries by affirming the value of local discourses of knowledge and language.

Internationally, social impact is created by demonstrating a model for archive curation that is locally engaged and sympathetic to local needs. The affirmation of local knowledge within a global arena (the internet) will also have wide social impact by helping to normalise the valuing of more locally sympathetic approaches to conservation policy. At all levels, knowledge exchange and protection are promoted.

The impact of this for all who engage with EWA (public and private sectors, conservation and education practitioners, local individuals and communities) lies in its bringing, through a network of Curators with considerable diversity of linguistic, cultural and ornithological knowledge, an important element of human discernment to the process of determining what constitutes a 'valid' entry for EWA, since only Curators who are knowledgeable about their contributing communities are appropriate to deliver the creative, novel, and most importantly diverse, solutions to the issue of EWA entry moderation that best serve the needs of diverse local communities. This also benefits the conservation and research communities using EWA because the validity of data in such an archive is critically determined by the communities' perception of its trustworthiness, and so also their willingness to engage with it. Since conservation is a public good, and knowledge is held in EWA for the public good, these ends are themselves a public benefit.

Information on community perception of EWA will be collected formally during the project through Curator and User feedback. Means will be developed to assess the effectiveness of the Curator Network - essential to reviewing progress. The Curator Network will remain an essential element of EWA throughout its life.