Category: history

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New data paper and datasets from crowdsourcing on Living with Machines

After lots of hard work by me, Nilo Pedrazzini, Miguel V., Arianna Ciula and Barbara McGillivray, we have a data paper in the Journal of Open Humanities Data: Language of Mechanisation Crowdsourcing Datasets from the Living with Machines Project.

And huge thanks to the thousands of Zooniverse volunteers who annotated 19th century newspaper articles to create the datasets we've published alongside the data paper!

Abstract: We present the ‘Language of Mechanisation’ datasets with examples of re-use in visualisations and analysis. These reusable CSV files, published on the British Library’s Research Repository, contain automatically-transcribed text from 19th century British newspaper articles. Volunteers on the Zooniverse crowdsourcing platform took part in tasks that asked ‘How did the word x change over time and place?’ They annotated articles with pre-selected meanings (senses) for the words coach, car, trolley and bike.

The datasets can support scholarship on a range of historical and linguistic research areas, including research on crowdsourcing and online volunteering behaviours, data processing and data visualisations methodologies.

The two datasets described are at:

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2019: an overview(ish)

A very incomplete page…

Projects: Living with Machines

  • Continued recruiting the project team
  • Set up the project website (graphic identity and WordPress template by an agency, working with the project team)
  • Helped devise the Communications strategy

Publications

Ridge, M. (forthcoming). Crowdsourcing in cultural heritage: A practical guide to designing and running successful projects. In K. Schuster & S. Dunn (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in Digital Humanities. Routledge.

Talks and teaching

June: I was at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis to teach Collections as Data with Thomas Padilla for the HILT digital humanities summer school.

An invited talk on 'Voyages of discovery with digital collections' for the Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University, Bloomington, June 2019

Blog posts

Other

Peer reviewer, Digital Humanities 2019

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2017: an overview

This page is a work in progress…

2017 was an unexpectedly challenging year, as much of it was taken up with treatment for cancer. (I'm fine now).

In February 2017 I did a workshop in Edinburgh for Dr Anouk Lang's Beyond the Black Box: Building Algorithmic and Statistical Literacy through Digital Humanities Tools and Resources and went to Santa Barbara for Always Already Computational: Library Collections as Data.

I keynoted at DIGIKULT 2017 in Sweden in March, 'Wishing Upon a Star: Making Crowdsourcing in Cultural Heritage a Reality' (video link): The success of crowdsourcing projects that have transcribed, categorized, linked and researched millions of cultural heritage and scientific records has inspired others to try it their own organisations. We can look to ‘star’ projects for ideas, but what is it really like to run a crowdsourcing project?

In June I was in Sydney for the Future Library Congress at EduTECH. I was in Taiwan in August and in October I spoke at the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC and gave a keynote on crowdsourcing in Angers, France.

I was interviewed by Thomas Padilla on Engaging Open Cultural Data for the DH+Lib 'data praxis' series.

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Crowdsourcing in cultural heritage: balancing productivity and engagement

In October 2017 I went to Université d’Angers, France, for a conference on Le crowdsourcing pour partager, enrichir et publier des sources patrimoniales / Crowdsourcing as a means to share, enrich and public heritage sources.

My abstract: Ideally, cultural heritage crowdsourcing projects enable participants to explore new interests that arise as they encounter historical and scientific collections, but they must also be able to justify the resources required to run projects designed to enhance collections. This can put pressure on projects to focus on productivity at the expense of enjoyment. Beginning with an overview of successful crowdsourcing projects that introduces typical tasks and project types, this talk will discuss the tensions between designing for productivity – the number of items processed and rate of data production – and public engagement.

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Historical thinking in crowdsourcing and citizen history projects

In October 2017 I went to DC for a conference 'Creating Historical Knowledge Socially: New Approaches, Opportunities and Epistemological Implications of Undertaking Research with Citizen Scholars' at the German Historical Institute.

Two conference reports, one by Patrick Manning and the other by Matthew Hiebert for the GHI provide more information about the discussions there.

My abstract: This 20-minute presentation examines the extent to which crowdsourcing and 'citizen history' projects and discussion platforms enable and encourage the practice of historical thinking. It takes the definitions of historical thinking set out by scholars and institutional bodies and the American Historical Association's 'core competencies' for students in history courses and degree programs as cues for an extensive trace-ethnographic analysis of participant discourse on crowdsourcing and digital community history platforms. This analysis found evidence for the development of historical thinking, situated learning and collective knowledge creation through participation in online communities of practice. Crowdsourcing project forums support many of the behaviours considered typical of communities of practice, including problem solving, requests for information, seeking the experience of past behaviours, coordinating actions, documenting shared knowledge and experiences, and discussing developments. This paper draws on research undertaken for my 2015 PhD, Making digital history: The impact of digitality on public participation and scholarly practices in historical research, in which I explored the ways in which some crowdsourcing projects encourage deeper engagement with history or science, and the role of communities of practice in citizen history.