Almost every definition of the Digital Humanities includes that it is a collaborative undertaking. Collaboration is not just with peers, but includes engaging the public in crowdsourcing. Wikipedia is the most visible of the crowdsourcing projects,

We have looked at AI, Wikipedia and transcription projects as examples of crowdsourcing. I prefer transcription for crowdsourcing. Transcription engages the public in a different way than a Wikipedia type project, in that transcription can connect the volunteer on many levels. First, they become part of something larger, and can contribute to spreading knowledge. Crowdsourcing the tasks of transcription brings a lot of potential manpower to a project, but also fosters connection with a collection and its goals. It can also connect a transcriber to history on a more personal level. A volunteer, with good instruction can transcribe and review and engage with artifacts in a completely different way than they are accustomed to. Volunteers can also help with determining the allocation of resources, as projects that more people are interested in working on can also help understand what the public is interested in and inform other decision.

Crowdsourced projects demand engaged participants and retaining participants to meet goals for work accomplishment. Engagement is related to value – making suer the participants feel valued and presenting the project in a way that demonstrated value. Shakespeare’s World and By the People both do this is several ways. While Shakespeare’s World his currently on hiatus for data processing, exploring the site shows some of the ways participant interest can be maintained. The Talk section shows some of the ways participants are engaged. The page includes news, FAQs, help with handwriting, areas of interest to researchers, OED (the project has contributed entries) and Recipes. Recipes invites the participants to try the ones they find and add results for the community.

Efforts with the researchers and volunteers resulted in working on understanding a recipe with a contestant from the Great British Baking Show, who published on it, and an entry into the OED.¹

In By the People, value of the participants in their work comes in several ways. First, the instructions are incredibly user friendly, making it a welcoming site. Using the Car barton Campaign as an example, choosing an item included a comment that the volunteer may be the first one in 100 years to be reading her letterbook — the volunteer is now part of a select group. The project goes on to encourage participants as they grow more confidant, to add doing peer reviews to what they are doing, again recognizing that they are key to not only transcription, but their increasing expertise is trusted to peer review the work.

1. Van Hyning, Victoria Anne, and Mason A. Jones. “Data’s Destinations: Three Case Studies in Crowdsourced Transcription Data Management and Dissemination.” Startwords 2 (2021)., pp 5-7.  https://startwords.cdh.princeton.edu/issues/2/datas-destinations/
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