We're pleased to announce the new Structured Data API for FromThePage. This IIIF-based API enables programmatic harvesting of crowdsourced contributions for field-based and spreadsheet-based transcription projects as well as user-created item-level metadata. Used in conjunction with the contributions API, developers should be able to poll a FromThePage server for the most … [Read more...] about Structured Data API
What’s the Difference Between a Crowdsourcing Volunteer and a Medieval Scribe?
I’ve been studying ways we might reduce errors--including my own!--in crowdsourced transcription projects. Part of that work has been analyzing a dataset of raw volunteer contributions to the Missouri State Archives death certificate indexing project, but another part has been reading what textual scholars have written about errors left by ancient and medieval scribes. Eugène … [Read more...] about What’s the Difference Between a Crowdsourcing Volunteer and a Medieval Scribe?
The Transcription Quality Balancing Act
We're often asked about the quality of crowdsourced transcription projects by people skeptical that amateurs can edit historic documents. Of course we're confident that amateurs can do high-quality work--especially in active collaboration with professionals--or else we wouldn't be doing this. But many questions remain. What is "quality"? While writing the first … [Read more...] about The Transcription Quality Balancing Act
Florence Bürgy on Selecting Material and Designing Projects
This is the first of a short series of posts highlighting the Masters Thesis by Florence Bürgy, Pratiques participatives et patrimoine numérisé : le cas des manuscrits. Réflexion en vue d’un projet de transcription collaborative en Ville de Genève. Bürgy analyzed the crowdsourcing needs of several cultural heritage institutions in Geneva, Switzerland, interviewing experts, … [Read more...] about Florence Bürgy on Selecting Material and Designing Projects
Textual Corruption is How Our Brains Work
I had a long conversation with my neighbor about theory of mind yesterday, and it's got me thinking about present-day corruption in textual transmission. Cognitive science is not my thing, but he introduced me to Predictive Coding - the idea that our brains are constantly making predictions about the world based on insufficient data, then (sometimes) correcting course when … [Read more...] about Textual Corruption is How Our Brains Work