Crowdsourcing Downunder
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5334/kula.52Keywords:
Crowdsourcing, anthropology, history, digital humanities, AustraliaAbstract
In this paper we report on the experience of two research projects that intended to experiment with crowdsourcing models for opening up their scholarly materials to the wider public. Both the Howitt & Fison project, and Mapping Print; Charting Enlightenment were designed to take into consideration particularities of the Australian academic environment: in the former case, sensitivities around materials relating to First Peoples; in both cases, geographical distance from potentially interested communities, and the difficulties of formal recognition and categorisation of time spent on activities that lie at the intersection of research and outreach. They had similar challenges in terms of needing to process a large amount of data before analysis and progress towards the projects’ main research goals could begin. They also had similar goals in terms of eventual use of the project data, for example, making historical texts available online, and producing maps, networks, timelines and digital exhibitions of images and texts. In the end, one project has found crowdsourcing invaluable for building connections with interested publics the other discovered that crowdsourcing was not necessary to produce the results the project needed, and has moved away from this to focus its efforts instead on the linking of existing data and automation of structuring and categorisation. This paper discusses how the projects came to take these different directions, and how the above-mentioned Australian contexts contributed to their evolution.
Downloads
Metrics
References
Anderson, K. 2011. “Even Crowdsourcing Can Get Too Expensive.” Scholarly Kitchen. Accessed June 1, 2018. https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2011/03/14/even-crowdsourcing-can-get-too-expensive/. Archived at: https://perma.cc/HUB2-9ZCL.
Australian Research Council. 2017. Engagement and Impact Assessment Pilot 2017 Report. https://www.arc.gov.au/engagement-and-impact-assessment/ei-pilot-overview.
Batty, Philip, and Jason Gibson. 2014. “Reconstructing the Spencer and Gillen Collection Online: Museums, Indigenous Perspectives and the Production of Cultural Knowledge in the Digital Age.” In: Corpora Ethnographica Online Strategien Der Digitalisierung Kultureller Archive Und Ihrer Präsentation Im Internet, Meyer, Holger, Schmitt, Christoph, Alf-Shering, Christian, and Janssen, Stephanie (eds.), 29–48. Munster: Waxman.
Causer, Tim, Justin Tonra, and Valerie Wallace. 2012. “Transcription Maximized; Expense Minimized? Crowdsourcing and Editing The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham.” Literary and Linguistic Computing, 272: 119–137. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqs004
De Boer, Victor, Michiel Hildebrand, Lora Aroyo, Pieter De Leenheer, Chris Dijkshoorn, Binyam Tesfa, and Guus Schreiber. 2012. “Nichesourcing: Harnessing the Power of Crowds of Experts.” In: Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management, EKAW 2012, A. ten Teije, J. Völker, S. Handschuh, H. Stuckenschmidt, M. d’Aquin, A. Nikolov, N. Aussenac-Gilles, and N. Hernandez (eds.), 16–20. Berlin: Springer. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-33876-2_3
Dousset, Laurent, Rachel Hendery, Harold Koch, Patrick McConvell, and Claire Bowern. 2010. “Developing a Database for Australian Indigenous Kinship Terminology: The AustKin project.” Australian Aboriginal Studies, 1: 42–56.
Fison L., and A. W. Howitt. 1880. Kamilaroi and Kurnai. Melbourne: George Robinson.
Gardner, Helen, and Patrick McConvell. 2015. Southern Anthropology: a History of Fison and Howitt’s Kamilaroi and Kurnai. London: Palgrave-MacMillan.
Gibson, Jason. Forthcoming. “Dealing in the Sacred: Working with Restricted Collections.” Museum Anthropology.
Glass, Aaron. 2014. “Indigenous Ontologies, Digital Futures: Plural Provenances and the Kwakwaka’wakw Collection in Berlin and Beyond.” In: Museum as Process: Translating Local and Global Knowledge, Raymond Silverman (eds.), 19–44. London: Routledge.
Glass, Aaron. 2017. “Reassembling The Social Organization: Collaboration and Digital Media in Remaking Boas’s 1897 Book.” Museum Worlds, 5(1): 108–132. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3167/armw.2017.050111
Hedges, Mark, and Stuart Dunn. 2012. “Crowd-Sourcing Scoping Study: Engaging the Crowd with Humanities Research.” Arts and Humanities Research Council. Accessed January 16, 2014. http://crowds.cerch.kcl.ac.uk/.
Hendery, Rachel. 2016. “‘Writing about Music is like Dancing about Architecture’: Integration of Multimedia into Linguistic and Anthropological Publications.” In: Language, Land and Song: Studies in honour of Luise Hercus, Peter K. Austin, Harold Koch, and Jane Simpson (eds.). London: EL Publishing.
Howitt, A. W. 1887. “On Australian Medicine Men; or, Doctors and Wizards of Some Australian Tribes.” The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 16: 23–59. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/2841737
Howitt, A. W. 1904. The Native Tribes of South-East Australia. London: Macmillan and Company, limited.
Kücklich, J. 2005. “Precarious Playbour: Modders in the Digital Games Industry.” Fibreculture, 5. Accessed June 1, 2018. http://five.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-025-precarious-playbour-modders-and-the-digital-games-industry/.
Kuehn, Kathleen, and Thomas F. Corrigan. 2013. “Hope Labor: The Role of Employment Prospects in Online Social Production.” The Political Economy of Communication, [S.l.], 1(1): 1–17.
Margetts, Anna, Nick Thieberger, Stephen Morey, and Simon Musgrave. 2015. “Assessing Annotated Corpora As Research Output.” Australian Journal of linguistics, 36(1): 1–21.
Needham, Rodney. 1967. “Introduction.” In: The Development of Marriage and Kinship, Rodney Needham (ed.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Phillips, Carol. 2010. “‘Crowdsourcing’ vs. ‘Community Sourcing.’” Millennial Marketing, September 10. Accessed June 1, 2018. http://millennialmarketing.com/2010/09/crowdsourcing-vs-community-sourcing/. Archived at: https://perma.cc/MMR8-7QAB.
Radcliffe Brown, A. 1931. The Social Organisation of Australian Tribes. Sydney: Oceania Monograph 1.
Ridge, Mia. 2012. “Frequently Asked Questions about Crowdsourcing in Cultural Heritage.” Open Objects (blog). Accessed June 1, 2018. http://www.openobjects.org.uk/2012/06/frequently-asked-questions-about-crowdsourcing-in-cultural-heritage/. Archived at: https://perma.cc/9T6U-6XST.
Ridge, Mia. 2013a. “Digital Participation, Engagement, and Crowdsourcing in Museums.” London Museums Group (blog). Accessed June 1, 2018. http://www.londonmuseumsgroup.org/2013/08/15/digital-participation-engagement-and-crowdsourcing-in-museums/. Archived at: https://perma.cc/8LJV-AP5A.
Ridge, Mia. 2013b. “From Tagging to Theorizing: Deepening Engagement with Cultural Heritage through Crowdsourcing.” Curator: The Museum Journal, 564: 435–450. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/cura.12046
Stanner W. 1972. “Howitt, A.W.” Australian Dictionary of Biography, 4. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
Stocking, George W. 1995. After Tylor, British Social Anthropology 1888–1951. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Terras, Melissa. 2016. “Crowdsourcing in the Digital Humanities.” In: A New Companion to Digital Humanities, Susan Schreibman, Raymond Siemens, and John Unsworth (eds.), 420–439. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.
Torrance, G. W. 1887. Music of the Australian Aboriginals. London: Harrison and Sons, Printers.
Zou, J. J. 2011. “Civil War Project Shows Pros and Cons of Crowdsourcing.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. Accessed June 1, 2018. https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/civil-war-project-shows-pros-and-cons-of-crowdsourcing/31749. Archived at: https://perma.cc/U6FH-P2C7?type=image.
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2019 Rachel Hendery, Jason Gibson
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
