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Digital History workshop: Crowdsourcing in the Humanities and cultural heritage sector. Victoria University of Wellington 23 April 2013 Session: “Choir attempted that beautiful anthem “Oh, Radiant Morn” – made a hash of it” - Making a hash of the Adkin Diary transcriptions Presenter: Adrian Kingston http://wtap.vuw.ac.nz/wordpress/digital-history/events/crowdsourcing-workshop/presenters/
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“Choir attempted that beautiful anthem “Oh, Radiant Morn” – made a hash of it”
Making a hash of the Adkin Diary transcriptions
Adrian KingstonCollections Information Manager, Digital Assets and DevelopmentMuseum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa@adriankingston
Crowdsourcing for the Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage SectorVictoria University of Wellington, 23 April 2013
Wed. Apr. 23.Worked at Swamp–Cow p[addock] fence. Bulliman took 48 heavy fat ewes at 15/-. In evening Father + I drove down to Levin No L[icense] Democratic Vote Campaign committee meeting. Father voted to chair + self appointed secretary. Discussed campaign.
Background George Leslie Adkin; Farmer, photographer, geologist, explorer,
archaeologist, ethnologist. 1 man, 41 diaries, 59 years, Over 21000 days Thousands of negatives and prints, some albums Initial deadline, launch of @life100yearsago ,a project of
WW100 Did everything ourselves. We resourced most of this project
with a curator (Kirstie Ross) and a monkey with a keyboard Figure out process (imaging, cropping, loading, transcription
guidelines), Figure out content (data structure, quirks of Adkin, glossaries
etc.) Project? What project? Very early days.
Process Assess album condition Photograph album pages Crop pages to days Create narrative for day Load “day” images to EMu “day” narrative Transcribe Add associated subjects, people, places (from authority files
and controlled vocabularies) Add context to narrative entries for month Some parts semi-automated, some completely manual; some
need no special skills, others do
Received a letter + referee’s report from Dr Chilton, Editor “Trans[actions of the] NZ Inst[itute], on my paper on Tararuas = “my theories based on too slender evidence and debatable evidence + also in part erroneous (? GLA). I decided to withdraw the paper as it is evidently unsuitable for publication in “Transactions”http://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/theme.aspx?irn=4294
Framework Using existing framework; EMu, Collections Online CIDOC CRM for building and expressing relationships Days are conceptual entities, not physical. Framework allows
for this Links to physical entities, diaries, photographs, albums Links to people, places, topics However, scale of content of really starting to highlight issues of
display in Collections Online.
What we’ve learnt So much content, so much data More than just one man’s story, a huge data source on NZ life So much potential for a number of fields of research Our existing data structure works really well Transcription only one part To get most out of the content, need the links, need the rich
conceptual model Context needed, or at least useful, for the reader Existing display not so hot Enlivens the collection, a step beyond just digitisation and
transcription
Issues Size of the project is daunting, but the transcription seems
manageable to do through crowdsourcing There are a number of existing platforms that look great, but
how to deal with matching to our structure, vocabularies, authorities?
Could use automated in text authority mining, but would need to then match back to authorities and structure
Beyond scope of crowdsourcing? But does that diminish the value of the “data”?
Could come later though, are we getting too hung up on quality?
Our potential crowd By starting it ourselves, we have some content available to
promote the crowdsourcing. Already had unsolicited volunteers The content is interesting: NZ history, early 20th Century
courtship, farming, geology, religion, war, politics, weather… Horowhenua locals interested in local history, and one of their
famous sons History students and educators Bring students closer to primary material, work with cursive
handwriting, highlight the importance of accuracy in relation to data, personal biography
Learning history through a first hand account Plan B is do war years with interns
We decided to go into town to lunch so I piloted the party to Kirkcaldie + Stains where we had a good dinner… Will wanted to know if one could have all the courses for 2/-. I told him it was not customary to indulge in more than six but that if he wanted to tackle the lot we would have to leave him at it. Olive ordered dishes she did not want + Alice also got a bit mixed up.
http://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/theme.aspx?irn=4095
Where to Can’t do with existing (human) resource Transcription only one part of the project Need to figure what parts need to be crowdsourced, what can’t Transcription will enable the adding the contextual and semantic
relationships and links to other sources Options for automating the above Or, with a focussed crowd and a finite project, maybe we don’t need
a new platform, could provide training and use existing tools Can’t crowdsource the display platform. Or can we? Crowdfund it? Make data available for analysis, visualisation, research, fun Need to formalise the project Lots to figure out
In evening rode down to see Maud – showed her some books but there seemed to be a lack of sympathy between us + the evening was a failure.
http://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/theme.aspx?irn=4080
See Adkin diaries of Collections Online @adkin_diary on Twitter @life100yearsago on Twitter
Questions? Kirstie Ross, Curator Modern New Zealand Adrian Kingston, Collections Information Manager Philip Edgar, Manager Digital Collections and Access
