Engaging crowds: citizen research and heritage data at scale
Lead Research Organisation:
National Archives
Department Name: Research and Academic Engagement
Abstract
Public participation in heritage research has the potential to engage new audiences, to enlist the crowd in analysing and generating data at scale, and to invite new perspectives on our national collections. Key to releasing this potential is effective engagement of diverse audiences, and the development of workflows for the creation and re-use of data within collection discovery platforms, for training automated systems, and to give access to the citizens and researchers.
We will identify ways of extending and deepening engagement across communities, proposing a best-practice framework for future citizen research projects with heritage data, informing their design and modelling. Citizen research and automation are two complementary methods for capturing and describing our increasing quantities of analogue, digital and digitised data. We propose articulating the synergies between them by developing workflows for the re-use of data beyond projects' initial focuses to provide current and future scholarship with the potential to address new research questions.
Led by three IROs with significant experience of citizen research, Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh (RBGE), Royal Museums Greenwich (RMG) and The National Archives (TNA), and the world-leading citizen research expertise of the University of Oxford's Zooniverse with its distinctive free, open source infrastructure, community of 1.9 million volunteers worldwide, and technical expertise of having delivered over 190 crowdsourcing projects, this project is uniquely placed to research and prototype tools for deeper engagement with our collections through citizen research: to create a virtuous circle of increased and better informed public engagement that leads communities to create more collections data at scale.
The project will convene expertise from across sectors to expand our citizen research community and to ensure the effective re-use of crowd-sourced data. This will be achieved by addressing the following questions:
1. How can we best engage volunteers across the nation's communities with citizen research projects, to further a shared understanding of our collections? What existing methods and data are the most successful for measuring that engagement?
2. How does the ability to navigate one's own path through the data of a citizen research project affect engagement with the project?
3. How can we verify, assess, present, and value the contributions of citizen research?
4. How can we enable the re-use of crowd-sourced data within collection discovery platforms, for training automated systems, and to give access to citizens and researchers that supports and encourages further engagement, re-use and analysis?
5. Does easy access to data created by citizen research projects affect engagement with projects? What other tools are necessary to enable meaningful access to this data?
We will identify ways of extending and deepening engagement across communities, proposing a best-practice framework for future citizen research projects with heritage data, informing their design and modelling. Citizen research and automation are two complementary methods for capturing and describing our increasing quantities of analogue, digital and digitised data. We propose articulating the synergies between them by developing workflows for the re-use of data beyond projects' initial focuses to provide current and future scholarship with the potential to address new research questions.
Led by three IROs with significant experience of citizen research, Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh (RBGE), Royal Museums Greenwich (RMG) and The National Archives (TNA), and the world-leading citizen research expertise of the University of Oxford's Zooniverse with its distinctive free, open source infrastructure, community of 1.9 million volunteers worldwide, and technical expertise of having delivered over 190 crowdsourcing projects, this project is uniquely placed to research and prototype tools for deeper engagement with our collections through citizen research: to create a virtuous circle of increased and better informed public engagement that leads communities to create more collections data at scale.
The project will convene expertise from across sectors to expand our citizen research community and to ensure the effective re-use of crowd-sourced data. This will be achieved by addressing the following questions:
1. How can we best engage volunteers across the nation's communities with citizen research projects, to further a shared understanding of our collections? What existing methods and data are the most successful for measuring that engagement?
2. How does the ability to navigate one's own path through the data of a citizen research project affect engagement with the project?
3. How can we verify, assess, present, and value the contributions of citizen research?
4. How can we enable the re-use of crowd-sourced data within collection discovery platforms, for training automated systems, and to give access to citizens and researchers that supports and encourages further engagement, re-use and analysis?
5. Does easy access to data created by citizen research projects affect engagement with projects? What other tools are necessary to enable meaningful access to this data?
Planned Impact
This project will investigate the current and potential practice of citizen research with our national collections, and its implications for collection-holding organisations and for the volunteers who participate in them. It is anticipated that the project will have impacts on the practice of record-keeping professionals in heritage organisations and on the way that academic researchers and researchers from other domains, particularly those specialising in the machine-learning and Artificial Intelligence, engage with heritage institutions when they wish to study heritage collections at scale. The project will also impact the way that citizens themselves understand, access, use and re-use heritage data.
The National Archives, Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh and Royal Museums Greenwich are well-placed to reach communities of citizen researchers, thanks to their heavily-used websites, blogs and extensive public programmes. As active members of the Independent Research Organisation Consortium, these IROs have strong contacts with other heritage institutions that collect and preserve large-scale heritage collections. Through their various academic programmes they also has strong links with the university and other research communities that employ computational approaches to heritage collections at scale. It also has strong engagement with different users of such collections, including public and family historians, government and policy-makers, and the general public.
The proposed project will enable heritage organisations to make best use of citizen research to create new and deeper understanding of our national heritage collections, by bringing together communities around each area of study, and create new insights into the selected collections. The project will engage the interest groups to find out their needs, thoughts and insights through our planned joint activities, such as workshops and focus groups, as described in our programme of work.
The project team will (i) create a prototype indexing tool that will enable navigation through a citizen research collection, (ii) explore different methods of increasing engagement with citizen research projects, (iii) create a platform for the data outputs of citizen research projects that will facilitate communication of data resources (iv) and provide recommendations and a metrics framework to help organisations incorporate their project's findings into their practice.
It aims to disseminate these findings and provide advice and guidelines to practitioners in different ways. The team will author accessible summaries for non-academic audiences, in the form of blogs, reports disseminated on the project's website and other programme members, and guest blog posts on other websites. The team is also targeting three academic conference series that encompass this academic range (Nordic Digital Humanities, Association for Cultural Heritage Computing, and DCDC) and will propose panels, contribute to conference workshops and present papers at these conferences. Team members will also publish in journals across this spectrum, such as at the Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage (JOCCH) and Digital Humanities Quarterly. Research outcomes, such us the prototype, methods and platform, will be available from the project website, enabling others to extend and build on our research.
As part of the Towards a National Collection programme, by laying the foundation for deeper exploration and further tool-building to increase citizen engagement in our national heritage and organising joint activities (workshops, focus groups and informal discussions), this project will benefit collection-holding organisations across the GLAM community in the UK and around the world, researchers who use these large-scale historical collections, citizen researchers, the academic community, government and policy-makers.
The National Archives, Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh and Royal Museums Greenwich are well-placed to reach communities of citizen researchers, thanks to their heavily-used websites, blogs and extensive public programmes. As active members of the Independent Research Organisation Consortium, these IROs have strong contacts with other heritage institutions that collect and preserve large-scale heritage collections. Through their various academic programmes they also has strong links with the university and other research communities that employ computational approaches to heritage collections at scale. It also has strong engagement with different users of such collections, including public and family historians, government and policy-makers, and the general public.
The proposed project will enable heritage organisations to make best use of citizen research to create new and deeper understanding of our national heritage collections, by bringing together communities around each area of study, and create new insights into the selected collections. The project will engage the interest groups to find out their needs, thoughts and insights through our planned joint activities, such as workshops and focus groups, as described in our programme of work.
The project team will (i) create a prototype indexing tool that will enable navigation through a citizen research collection, (ii) explore different methods of increasing engagement with citizen research projects, (iii) create a platform for the data outputs of citizen research projects that will facilitate communication of data resources (iv) and provide recommendations and a metrics framework to help organisations incorporate their project's findings into their practice.
It aims to disseminate these findings and provide advice and guidelines to practitioners in different ways. The team will author accessible summaries for non-academic audiences, in the form of blogs, reports disseminated on the project's website and other programme members, and guest blog posts on other websites. The team is also targeting three academic conference series that encompass this academic range (Nordic Digital Humanities, Association for Cultural Heritage Computing, and DCDC) and will propose panels, contribute to conference workshops and present papers at these conferences. Team members will also publish in journals across this spectrum, such as at the Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage (JOCCH) and Digital Humanities Quarterly. Research outcomes, such us the prototype, methods and platform, will be available from the project website, enabling others to extend and build on our research.
As part of the Towards a National Collection programme, by laying the foundation for deeper exploration and further tool-building to increase citizen engagement in our national heritage and organising joint activities (workshops, focus groups and informal discussions), this project will benefit collection-holding organisations across the GLAM community in the UK and around the world, researchers who use these large-scale historical collections, citizen researchers, the academic community, government and policy-makers.
Publications
Fulton E
(2022)
Volunteer survey report
Haston E
(2022)
After the Crowds Disperse
Hawkins A
(2022)
Citizen Research Landscape
Ogden B
(2022)
User engagement analysis
Salmon M
(2022)
Voice of the volunteers
| Description | Our project investigated citizen research in the round, seeking perspectives of many stakeholders through a range of methods. The results of this work informed recommendations for best practice in encouraging and supporting meaningful public involvement with heritage collections. Our work feeds into the Towards a National Collection programme, enhancing our understanding of engaging the public digitally with cultural heritage. We surveyed the current landscape of cultural heritage crowdsourcing, particularly across the UK. A broad range of experience of citizen research in the UK is included in the report, from small-scale short-term projects, such as those set up to move pre-established volunteering projects online in response to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, to large-scale long-term citizen research projects. Online citizen research projects bring many benefits to both volunteers and organisations, and also present a number of challenges. Successes relate to volunteer recruitment and engagement, as well as opportunities for increased data production and data quality. Data quality was reported as an area of challenge, together with issues relating to chosen citizen research platforms and open access. We developed an indexing tool and a subject set selection tool to enable citizen researchers to choose their own pathway through a project on the Zooniverse platform (project partners, and the largest crowdsourcing platform in the world). These tools are available for other projects to use, and the software is open source, to enable further re-use and development beyond the Zooniverse environment. We implemented the tool in three citizen research projects run by each of our cultural heritage partners (Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Royal Museums Greenwich, The National Archives). The data produced by volunteers on these projects is available for further research and to augment existing metadata in institutional catalogues. We surveyed volunteers on these projects to understand their motivations for engaging with these projects, and invited volunteers from any crowdsourcing effort to join a workshop considering the volunteer experience. Detailed reports and analysis are published. The key finding is that online cultural heritage citizen research has an overwhelmingly positive impact on participants. Volunteers cited a mixture of altruistic benefits, such as helping with research, giving back, and increasing access to records, and benefits to the individual, including providing opportunities for learning and development, engagement in research, filling in time, and gaining a sense of community. They appreciated being part of something 'bigger' than the immediate work and valued the flexibility to choose between a range of tasks and microtasks that suit different learning styles. The vast majority of volunteers reported undertaking follow-up activities, and that cultural heritage was vital, very important or quite important to them. Two thirds of crowdsourcing participants also volunteer elsewhere, online, in person or both. We invited practitioners to three workshops that focussed respectively on crowdsourcing and automation through the use machine learning technologies, the volunteer experience, and the use of crowdsourced data by cultural heritage organisations. We recorded the discussions and shared detailed recommendations from these expert groups, noted in the section below. |
| Exploitation Route | Our recommendations for citizen research projects, particularly in the cultural heritage sector, are published in the report on the wider landscape. They include practical and ethical considerations for organisations seeking to engage citizens in collections research, from project concept and design, through engaging with volunteers and running a project, to sharing its successes and outputs. Crowdsourcing projects should be transparent about their aims. Volunteers need to have agency and be rewarded for their contributions. The expectations of participants and project owners need to be managed. The outputs of the project need to be of benefit to the public. It is an ethical imperative to ensure that volunteer-produced data is not useless and that volunteers understand what use/s data will be put to. There are two scenarios that risk the creation of useless data: where platforms enable volunteers to 'make up' their own rules about the data they collect; and where the project designers have not considered how they (and others) will use the data collected. Data can be re-used by individuals, by organisations in their existing systems, and computationally, including as training data for machine learning. An area of future development for citizen research is how to improve the value of the engagement for the majority of volunteers engage more briefly with a project than the small number who contribute the majority of the effort. As more crowdsourcing projects include elements of machine learning alongside people's contributions, further research into how this affects volunteers' motivation and satisfaction is needed. |
| Sectors | Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| URL | https://zenodo.org/record/7152031#.ZBIY9GnP1yw |
| Description | New crowdsourcing projects have used the software tools developed during this project, which include the subject set selection feature, and the indexing tool to enable volunteers to navigate their own path through a crowdsourcing project. Projects include: https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/kmc35/peoples-contest-digital-archive, https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/pmlogan/poets-and-lovers, https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/profdrrogerlouismartinez-davila/deciphering-secrets-unlocking-the-manuscripts-of-medieval-spain and https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/printmigrationnetwork/print. Findings from the project have fed into the Towards a National Collection research programme, including through informing the Consolidation Report: Insights from Towards a National Collection Foundation Projects, by Dr Carlotta Paltrinieri, http://ow.ly/fnsk50N25QF. Learnings from the project were fed into the AHRC/NEH-funded Collective Wisdom project, https://collectivewisdomproject.org.uk/, through the PI joining the book sprint and co-authoring the resulting book, https://britishlibrary.pubpub.org/. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2022 |
| Sector | Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| Impact Types | Cultural |
| Title | HMS NHS volunteer-transcribed data |
| Description | HMS NHS invited volunteers to transcribe 100 years of seafarers' medical data from the Dreadnought Seamen's Hospital at Greenwich. The project is led by Royal Museums Greenwich, part of Engaging Crowds. This dataset is the volunteer-transcribed data from the first, completed phase of the project. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | The data has been cleaned by project members and is available to the public, including project volunteers, and to colleagues at Royal Museums Greenwich to enhance the metadata about their collections through their institutional catalogue. |
| URL | https://tanc-ahrc.github.io/EngagingCrowds/HMS%20NHS%20Data.html |
| Title | Scarlets and Blues volunteer-transcribed data |
| Description | Volunteers contributing to the citizen research Scarlets and Blues project transcribed data on the stories, lives and interactions of WWI-era staff and soldiers at the Royal Hospital Chelsea. The project was led by The National Archives. This dataset is the volunteer-transcribed data from the first, completed phase of the project. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | The data has been cleaned by project members and is available to the public, including project volunteers, and to colleagues at The National Archives to enhance collections metadata through their institutional catalogue. |
| URL | https://tanc-ahrc.github.io/EngagingCrowds/Scarlets%20and%20Blues%20Data.html |
| Title | The RBGE Herbarium: Exploring Gesneriaceae, the African violet family: volunteer-transcribed data |
| Description | The RBGE Herbarium: Exploring Gesneriaceae, the African violet family has allowed volunteers to be part of opening up global biodiversity research possibilities by releasing the data held in 300 years of plant specimens. The project was led by Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. This dataset is the volunteer-transcribed data from the first, completed phase of the project. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | The data has been cleaned by project members and is available to the public, including project volunteers, and to colleagues at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh to enhance the collections metadata and understanding of the history of their collections. |
| URL | https://tanc-ahrc.github.io/EngagingCrowds/RBGE%20Herbarium%20Data.html |
| Description | Collaboration with British Library |
| Organisation | The British Library |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Public |
| PI Contribution | We have collaborated with the BL to develop new metadata schema for crowdsourced transcription working within the IIIF framework. We expect this to greatly enhance the utility of our projects for partners in the GLAM sector |
| Collaborator Contribution | The BL brought expertise and consulting on the IIIF framework and its use, which was invaluable in our design. |
| Impact | The software is included in the Zooniverse's Panoptes Front End: https://github.com/zooniverse/Panoptes-Front-End/actions |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | Partnership with Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh |
| Organisation | Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | We supported Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh to create a new citizen research project on the Zooniverse platform. We worked with them on research into the crowdsourcing landscape. We co-organised a project workshop with colleagues at RBGE in December 2020 on the subject of crowdsourced data accessibility and reuse. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh were a co-investigator on the project. They used the Zooniverse Project Builder to create a new citizen research project based on their collections. They also organised and delivered one of the project workshops, where we asked crowdsourcing practitioners to discuss data accessibility and reuse. |
| Impact | Blog post inviting expressions of interest for the workshop. Citizen research project with participation from volunteers. |
| Start Year | 2020 |
| Description | Partnership with Royal Museums Greenwich |
| Organisation | Royal Museums Greenwich |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Public |
| PI Contribution | We supported Royal Museums Greenwich to create a new citizen research project on the Zooniverse platform. We worked with them on research into the crowdsourcing landscape. We supported them with the delivery of an online workshop for citizen researchers. We worked to clean the data that was produced by the crowdsourcing project to a publishable standard for their institutional catalogue and shared the workflow with them. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Royal Museums Greenwich were a Co-Investigator on the project. They created and tested a new citizen research project called HMS NHS. They worked with Zooniverse to integrate an indexing tool that allows volunteers to choose a pathway through their citizen research project. |
| Impact | Royal Museums Greenwich developed a new citizen research project using the Zooniverse Project Builder. The HMS NHS project has been through beta testing where members of the public gave feedback on how it works. The project launched publicly and has attracted 100s of volunteers. Royal Museums Greenwich also published a blog post about their citizen research project and ran a workshop in December 2021. |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | Partnership with Zooniverse, University of Oxford |
| Organisation | Zooniverse |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | We worked with Zooniverse to develop a new citizen research project, Scarlets and Blues where volunteers will be able to transcribe documents relating to the Royal Hospital Chelsea in WWI. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Zooniverse at the University of Oxford were a Co-Investigator on the project. Zooniverse developed an indexing tool that has been implemented into new citizen research projects to give volunteers the agency to choose their own pathway as they work. They have also contributed to project research into best practice in crowdsourcing. |
| Impact | This work covered amendments to the software which powers the Zooniverse citizen science platform to suit crowdsourcing engagement with archival collections. Specifically, the software developments enabled volunteers to choose their own path through material. Zooniverse have given several presentations about this work. |
| Start Year | 2020 |
| Title | HMS NHS - citizen research project |
| Description | The Zooniverse team have created a clickable InVision prototype as well as user stories to help guide the active development process for a new indexing tool that will allow users to choose their own pathway through a project. Royal Museums Greenwich has created this citizen research project using the Zooniverse Project Builder and this indexing tool will be integrated into this project. The project has undergone alpha and beta testing and will be launched via the new Zooniverse front end. HMS NHS: The Nautical Health Service, is based on the records of Dreadnought Seamen's Hospital (RMG, DSH), a hospital for merchant seamen that existed in Greenwich for over 150 years (from 1826-1986), and the main clinical site for seafarers entering or leaving the busy port of London from all over the world. |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2020 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | HMS NHS has been through beta testing and review, with hundreds of volunteer classifications submitted. |
| URL | https://frontend.preview.zooniverse.org/projects/msalmon/hms-nhs-the-nautical-health-service |
| Title | Scarlets and Blues - citizen research project |
| Description | The National Archives citizen research project, Scarlets and Blues, takes a behind-the-scenes look at the lives of people at the Royal Hospital Chelsea during the First World War (TNA, WO 250). The project was built using the Zooniverse Project Builder and has been through alpha and beta testing. It launched in November 2021. |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2020 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | N/A |
| URL | https://frontend.preview.zooniverse.org/projects/bogden/scarlets-and-blues |
| Title | The RBGE Herbarium - citizen research project |
| Description | Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh's citizen research project, The RBGE Herbarium launched in January 2022. The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh's extensive Herbarium collection is estimated to hold three million specimens representing half to two thirds of the worlds flora. Herbarium specimen data helps inform and target conservation and climate change mitigation efforts protecting plant species for future generations. Volunteers transcribed specimen label data in order to make the digital specimens 'research-ready' for the international research community. The project was built using the Zooniverse Project Builder and has been through alpha and beta testing. |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | N/A |
| URL | https://frontend.preview.zooniverse.org/projects/emhaston/the-rbge-herbarium-exploring-gesneriaceae-... |
| Title | Zooniverse: Panoptes for Engaging Crowds |
| Description | This work covers amendments to the software which powers the Zooniverse citizen science to suit engagement with archival collections. Specifically, we will enable volunteers to choose their own path through material. |
| Type Of Technology | Software |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | Two new crowdsourcing projects used the full indexing tool software: https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/printmigrationnetwork/print and https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/profdrrogerlouismartinez-davila/deciphering-secrets-unlocking-the-manuscripts-of-medieval-spain. Two new projects used the subject set selection feature: https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/pmlogan/poets-and-lovers and https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/kmc35/peoples-contest-digital-archive. |
| URL | https://github.com/zooniverse/panoptes-python-client |
| Description | A talk or presentation - Conference paper |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The PI presented the findings of the project at the V Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Archives, Madrid, Spain. There was an audience of about 50 in the room, an international live online audience of over 250, and the talk has been published online via YouTube. It sparked questions and contributed to the conference's discussions on the theme of AI, archives, volunteer and professional practice, and crowdsourcing. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Annual report of The National Archives |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The National Archives reported on the project as part of its Annual Report 2020-21, which was published online in July 2021. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-national-archives-annual-report-and-accounts-2020-to-... |
| Description | Beta testing and review of citizen research project |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | HMS NHS, the citizen research project led by Royal Museums Greenwich on the Zooniverse platform, has been through beta testing. It was opened up to a select group of volunteers who tested the workflows and gave their feedback. 53 feedback responses were gathered and 793 classifications were made on the website. Royal Museums Greenwich used this feedback to refine the project ready for its official launch. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://frontend.preview.zooniverse.org/projects/msalmon/hms-nhs-the-nautical-health-service |
| Description | Beta testing and review of citizen research project |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The RBGE Herbarium, the citizen research project led by Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh on the Zooniverse platform, has been through beta testing. It was opened up to a select group of volunteers who tested the workflows and gave their feedback. Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh used this feedback to refine the project ready for its official launch. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://frontend.preview.zooniverse.org/projects/emhaston/the-rbge-herbarium-exploring-gesneriaceae-... |
| Description | Beta testing and review of citizen research project |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Scarlets and Blues, the citizen research project led by The National Archives on the Zooniverse platform, has been through beta testing. It was opened up to a select group of volunteers who tested the workflows and gave their feedback. The National Archives used this feedback to refine the project ready for its official launch. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/bogden/scarlets-and-blues |
| Description | Blog post (TNA) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The National Archives published a series of two blog posts in November and December 2021 delving into the records of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, on which their citizen research project was based. These blog posts showed how volunteer efforts could feed into new avenues of research. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/researching-lives-at-the-royal-hospital-chelsea-for-the-scarlet... |
| Description | Blog post (TNA) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The National Archives published a series of two blog posts in November and December 2021 delving into the records of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, on which their citizen research project was based. These blog posts showed how volunteer efforts could feed into new avenues of research. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/researching-lives-at-the-royal-hospital-chelsea-for-the-scarlet... |
| Description | Blog post - invitation to express interest in workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | We published a blog post on Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh's blog encouraging people to express interest in a workshop which took place on 1 December 2020. The workshop focused on the question of ingesting and reusing data after the end of a citizen research project. Cultural heritage practitioners and researchers from a range of disciplines were invited to express their interest in participating in the workshop, including historians, curators and collections specialists, anyone whose research engages with collections, web designers, Collection Management System (CMS) developers, citizen research platform developers, data scientists, Human-Computer Interaction researchers, social scientists, and more, who work within the heritage, academic, industrial, or third sectors. We received over 50 submissions from people who wanted to participate in the workshop, most of whom took part on the day. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://stories.rbge.org.uk/archives/34186 |
| Description | Blog post - report on citizen research project |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This was a blog post describing Royal Museum Greenwich's citizen research project, HMS NHS. It was intended to publicise the project and invite volunteers who might like to get involved once the project launches. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/blog/library-archive/hms-nhs-nautical-health-service-volunteer-project |
| Description | Blog post - summary of Engaging Crowds |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | We published a blog post on The National Archives' blog to introduce the Engaging Crowds project and let potential volunteers know that new citizen research projects would be forthcoming. Following the publication of the blog post, we received several enquiries from people who were interested in volunteering. We asked these people to subscribe to our mailing list, so they could be informed when our citizen research projects launched. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/exploring-the-possibilities-of-citizen-research-and-heritage-da... |
| Description | Blog post on RBGE website |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh published a post on their blog to publicise the launch of their citizen research project. The post told the story of the project and encouraged new volunteers to get involved. Over 400 volunteers participated in the project, which was completed in just over a month. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://stories.rbge.org.uk/archives/36055 |
| Description | Blog post on Zooniverse website |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Sam Blickhan (Zooniverse) published a post on the Zooniverse blog, introducing volunteers to the new indexing tool that has been produced as part of the project. It explained how the Zooniverse team have designed and built a new tool that allows volunteers to have more agency around which subject sets-and even which subjects-they want to work on, rather than receiving them randomly. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://blog.zooniverse.org/2021/11/03/engaging-crowds-new-options-for-subject-delivery-interaction/... |
| Description | Cafe Scientifique Didcot |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Talk to Didcot Cafe Scientifique online |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Citizen research project launched |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | 'The RBGE Herbarium: Exploring Gesneriaceae, the African violet family', the citizen research project led by Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, launched on the Zooniverse platform in January 2022. It involved the transcription of selected elements of the herbarium collection label data from herbarium specimens. Over 400 volunteers participated and the project was completed in February 2022. Project volunteers were active on the online forum, asking questions and making suggestions. 412 volunteers participated, making 21, 710 classifications. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/emhaston/the-rbge-herbarium-exploring-gesneriaceae-the-african-v... |
| Description | Citizen research project launched |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Scarlets and Blues, the citizen research project run by The National Archives, launched on the Zooniverse platform in November 2021. Volunteers transcribed pages from five minute books of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, covering 1908 to 1919, which of course includes the First World War. The project was completed on 19 January, thanks to the work of over 500 volunteers. Volunteers also made several enquiries and suggestions on the project forum. 523 volunteers participated, making 10,761 classifications. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021,2022 |
| URL | https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/bogden/scarlets-and-blues |
| Description | Conference paper |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The PI and project manager presented the work of the project at the 5th Connected Communities Heritage symposium, to about 80 people. It sparked questions and contributed to the day's discussions on the theme of connected communities and heritage. Presentations are available online via Facebook, where discussions continue. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://www.facebook.com/HeritageNetwork |
| Description | Conference workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | We delivered an online workshop called 'Cultural heritage hand in hand: how should we work with a community of citizen researchers?' as part of the DCDC conference in July 2021. 35 people attended the workshop, which aimed to gather insights from practitioners and researchers who had experience of supporting online volunteering. Participants discussed the the best ways to support citizen researchers and make good use of the cultural heritage data they produce. Insights from the workshop will be included in the final project reports. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://dcdcconference.com/ |
| Description | Discussion panel: Masterpiece International Art Fair Symposium |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | The Masterpiece International Art Fair themed its symposium on Museums, Research and Discovery. Its panel on Modes of Discovery focussed sharing data between institutions and with the public can lead to types of discovery that might not otherwise be possible. My contribution to the discussion explored collaboration between collections, provenance, public participation in research, how technologies such as machine learning, computer vision and crowdsourcing platforms can generate new ways of understanding and interacting with collections, and how community-generated digital content can be linked to established collections. 70 people attended the online panel and break-out sessions afterwards. The organisers reported a high level of engagement. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUvduGhrD8iGNONAcct528BGY8dMI9ejcDO |
| Description | Keynote lecture for Maltese national project launch |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Pip Willcox, Head of Research at The National Archives, delivered the keynote lecture at the launch of Memorja, the National Oral Sound and Vision archive in Malta. The lecture explored digital public engagement with archival collections, including through citizen research and through co-designing automated methods of linking community-generated digital content to more established collections. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://nationalarchives.gov.mt/en/Pages/Memorja.aspx |
| Description | Launch of new citizen research project |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | HMS NHS, the citizen research project led by Royal Museums Greenwich on the Zooniverse platform, was launched in June 2021. The second phase of the project launched in February 2022. The project is still ongoing. At time of writing, 1,849 volunteers have participated, making 31,852 classifications. Volunteers transcribed entries from the Admissions Registers of the Dreadnought Seamen's Hospital, which provided medical care to seafarers from all over the world entering or leaving the busy port of London for over 150 years. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021,2022 |
| URL | https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/msalmon/hms-nhs-the-nautical-health-service |
| Description | Magazine feature (Who do you think you are?) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | HMS NHS, the citizen research project led by Royal Museums Greenwich, was featured in Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine's Transcription Tuesday event on 1February 2022. The magazine appealed to volunteers to take part in HMS NHS, alongside 3 other projects. Volunteers completed 3655 classifications on this day for HMS NHS. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/news/over-17000-records-transcribed-on-transcription-tue... |
| Description | Panel contribution |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Grant Miller, Zooniverse Communications Lead and Project Manager, presented as part of an online panel on 'The Interface(s) of a Virtual National Collection' at the DARIAH Annual Event 2021. The panel included representatives from other Towards a National Collection (TaNC) projects. A recording of the session is now on YouTube and has been watched 70 times. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFBKZJfyVZk&feature=youtu.be |
| Description | Podcast interview, by Aoyama Vision Initiative/Japan Society for the Promotion of Science |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This podcast discussion between the PI and a professor at Aoyama Gakuin University, Japan was part of a series that aims to demystify digital approaches to library and archive collections, and literary studies, and promote public participation in collections. It is part of wider activities to promote these fields across Japan's university and cultural heritage sectors, and within the host university, where the podcasts are used as teaching materials. Post-pandemic, an in-person symposium that brings these audiences together in discussion is planned. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj6yza09dkY&t=34s |
| Description | Presentation (European Digital Treasures) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Jeff James, CEO of The National Archives and Roger Kershaw, Head of Strategic Operations and Volunteers presented to the board of the "European Digital Treasures: Management of centennial archives in the 21st century" project. The presentation covered lessons learnt from The National Archives' experience of crowdsourcing. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://www.digitaltreasures.eu/ |
| Description | Presentation (ICA conference) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Pip Willcox drew on the project findings to deliver an online presentation as part of the International Council on Archives conference in October 2021.This paper examined citizen research as a means for developing meaningful engagement between cultural heritage organisations and volunteers, and the ethics and practice of using artificial intelligence and machine learning to enhance this symbiotic relationship. The paper was entitled 'Empowered people, empowering society: citizen research and shared heritage'. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://www.ica.org/en/ica-2021-virtual-conference-0 |
| Description | Presentation (RHUL) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Rachel Smillie, Head of Academic Partnerships at The National Archives delivered a talk to humanities researchers and senior research teams at Royal Holloway University of London in May 2021. Around 40 people attended. The National Archives continued to develop their relationship with Royal Holloway and discussed potential collaborations following this event. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Project website |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The Engaging Crowds website is a central point for all information about the project. We share information about project milestones and have added documents including our interim report and minutes of our advisory board meeting. We used the project website to put out call for crowdsourcing practitioners to share publications, reports and projects that we might not be aware of. We received over 25 responses, which have been fed into our final report on the state of the field. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://tanc-ahrc.github.io/EngagingCrowds/ |
| Description | Public lecture |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | A public lecture given by the PI that included a description of progress on this project was hosted by the University of Exeter and attended virtually by about 80 people. Questions and discussion afterwards centred on public participation in collections research. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://www.exeter.ac.uk/news/events/details/index.php?event=10914 |
| Description | Talk (British Commission for Maritime History) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Martin Salmon (Royal Museums Greenwich) delivered a talk at an online event on 'Doing Maritime History Research Online'. He gave a summary of his efforts in setting up and running the HMS NHS project. He received questions from the audience. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/doing-maritime-history-research-online-tickets-225519734597# |
| Description | Volunteer online survey |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | In February-March 2022, we launched an online volunteer survey. We circulated the survey via the Zooniverse mailing lists, reaching all registered users who had contributed to the three citizen research projects which were part of Engaging Crowds. The survey reached over 250 individual respondents. The results of the survey will be summarised in the project's final report. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Webinar long paper |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | A long paper was presented by the PI during an AHRC Towards a National Collection webinar to about 150 people. It sparked questions and discussion, related both to this project and drawing commonalities and discussing differences of approach with the other Foundation project that was presented, Provisional Semantics. It is intended that this sharing of progress on projects will lead into further related work. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Webinar paper |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Over 100 people attended a webinar hosted by the AHRC's Towards a National Collection where the PI presented the work of this project. It sparked questions and discussion, and was followed by 6 approaches to the project to share information about crowdsourcing or citizen research projects in other cultural heritage settings, requests for reports arising from the project, and requests to collaborate in future. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| Description | Workshop (RMG) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Royal Museums Greenwich hosted an online workshop in December 2021 to hear volunteers' opinions on what works and what doesn't when it comes to online cultural heritage projects. The workshop included short presentations from speakers, providing an overview of the Engaging Crowds project and a demonstration of a brand new indexing tool on the Zooniverse citizen research platform, which allows volunteers to choose their own pathway through a citizen research project. An important part of the workshop was the informal discussions in break out groups where volunteers talked about their experiences and preferences relating to online volunteering. The findings from the workshop will be included in the project's final reports. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://tanc-ahrc.github.io/EngagingCrowds/Voices%20of%20the%20Volunteers:%20The%20experience%20of%2... |
| Description | Workshop with crowdsourcing practitioners |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The workshop 'After the crowds disperse: Crowdsourced data rediscovered and researched' has hosted online by Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. The workshop lasted 2.5 hours, with short presentations, break-out room discussion and then shared feedback. The workshop looked at the hurdles that must be overcome after a citizen research project ends, in order to achieve seamless movement of data between institutional collection management systems (CMS) and crowdsourcing platforms and back again. Crowdsourcing practitioners gave presentations about their work and then participants split into break-out rooms to discuss questions around data accessibility, ingestion and reuse. The findings from the workshop will be included in the project's final reports. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://stories.rbge.org.uk/archives/34186 |
| Description | Zoom Talks |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | A total of 24 talks given online during the pandemic. Mean audience 72. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020,2021 |