Crowdsourcing can be an exciting way to improve metadata and to experiment with making metadata more comprehensive. We all describe materials differently and uniquely based on our own interests, perspectives, and life experiences. How do you take crowdsourced metadata and make it useful? In the book, Metadata: Shaping Knowledge from Antiquity to the Semantic Web, … [Read more...] about Can the Crowd Create Metadata?
structured transcription
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
Spreadsheet Transcription in FromThePage
Last month, Ben and Sara Brumfield hosted a webinar to introduce the new spreadsheet transcription feature. The presentation, linked below in a video and embedded as slides, presents a walkthrough of the spreadsheet transcription interface, and shares how to configure and begin using the new feature. This was one of FromThePage's most-attended webinars, and it was exciting to … [Read more...] about Spreadsheet Transcription in FromThePage
What We Learned Building Spreadsheet Transcription
We recently released our new spreadsheet transcription feature, and we're excited about how it can unlock structured data in your collections -- everything from scientific observations to census data. We're already seeing successful & diverse projects like Sewanee's Convict Leasing Transcription Project (part of their Roberson Project on Slavery, Race, and … [Read more...] about What We Learned Building Spreadsheet Transcription
Building a Structured Transcription Tool with FreeUKGen
I'm currently working with FreeUKGen--the charity behind the genealogy database FreeBMD--to build a general-purpose, open-source tool for crowdsourced transcription of structured manuscript data into a searchable database. We're basing our system on the Scribe tool developed for the Citizen Science Alliance for What's the Score at the Bodleian, which originated out of their … [Read more...] about Building a Structured Transcription Tool with FreeUKGen