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Transcribing between the lines: crowd-sourcing historic data collection
Nicole KearneyMuseum Victoria@nicolekearney
Dr Elycia WallisMuseum Victoria@elyw
Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL)
The world’s largest online repository for biodiversity heritage and archival materials.
http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org
BHL-Australia
Total BHL-Au uploads• 546 volumes• 119 titles• 140,252 pages
An average of 2,000 pages/month
BHL-Australia
The Naturalist's Miscellany, or Coloured figures Of natural objects, Vol. 10, George Shaw, 1799.
The first published illustration of the Duck-billed Platypus
“Of all the Mammalia yet known it seems the most extraordinary…
…at first view, it naturally excites the idea of some deceptive preparation by artificial means.”
A synopsis of the Birds of Australia and the adjacent islands, John Gould, 1837.
What’s in the box?
Ornithology Department Archives
“Estate of Graham Brown – note books”
Catalogued in our Records & Archives database (TRIM)
Why are field diaries so important?
Field diaries are full of
DATA
DATE: 26 September 1948
OBSERVATIONS
TIME: 8am
LOCATION:Lake Corangamite
DATE: 26 September 1948
OBSERVATIONS
TIME: 8am
LOCATION:Lake Corangamite
BEHAVIOUR: nesting
SILVER GULLS (26.9.48)
300 nests on 1 island
15 islands of similar size
Estimates 4500 nests
Nesting success~ 1.5 eggs/nest
=7000 new gulls from this year from this locality
Underutilised resource
Inaccessible in their current state
• single hard copy• single location• hand-written (in the field)• historic scripts• unsearchable• uncatalogued
Our scientists need this data!
19312012 2014
Grampians National Park
Images: Heath Warwick & Nicole Kearney / Museum Victoria
A historic baseline for climate change research
?
Step 1: create individual records
A record for every item
Step 2: create digital versions
Digitisation & post processing
A digital version in our database
OCR from a page of Graham Brown’s diary
l>^v-^wAl^ livU*^/) Curiae '^tila'* -u^vttcvi Lsefei cit^:< Lv. 1^ Ol^Vm?iJcw , L>w i^-^Otv^ dS^^iL* ll^^Uk^ M/tTM^li?'^ tvc4fi>r '^^-^ G^WtY^^ uve^v. llCCUvlr]^vv\l^ '^L^>u^ l^t^
You can’t search handwriting
Step 3: transcription
Step 3: select a transcription tool
How to attract online volunteers?
http://volunteer.ala.org.au/
Forums build an online community
http://volunteer.ala.org.au/
Ready for display?17.
http://volunteer.ala.org.au/
DigiVol export
Extracted transcript in Word
http://volunteer.ala.org.au/
Converted & reformatted
http://volunteer.ala.org.au/
Ready for display!
Transcript in our database
Step 4: make them accessible
Add the metadata
http://volunteer.ala.org.au/
Add the metadata
http://volunteer.ala.org.au/
Add the metadata
Upload into Internet Archive
https://archive.org/
Final destination: BHL
http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Along with the transcriptions!
http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Final step?Tell everyone!
http://museumvictoria.com.au/about/mv-blog
http://blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/
Progress thus far…
http://volunteer.ala.org.au/
• 36 field diaries digitised• 4 authors• 18 diaries transcribed
(2 per month)• 4 diaries in BHL• 70 crowd-sourced volunteers
New homes for our field diaries
… in our Scientific Art & Observation Collection.
But what about the data?
There’s a lot of data!
5 Graham Brown field diaries:
Date Species Location09/09/1947 Red Wattle bird Colac, near lake, in flowering gums13/09/1947 Crested Grebes Colac East, end of Church St, mouth
of the creek
13/09/1947 Little Pied Cormorant Colac, perched on the wreck13/09/1947 Mountain Duck Colac East, end of Church St, mouth
of the creek
13/09/1947 Musk Duck Colac, on the lake13/09/1947 Silver Gull Colac, over the lake, opposite
Queen's Avenue
5611 animal sightings
547 mentions of people & organisations
A final word about online volunteers
Rewarding online volunteers
http://volunteer.ala.org.au/
Slide credit: Paul Flemons, DigiVol Volunteer Survey, April 2015
