Category: publication

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Article: 'From tagging to theorizing: deepening engagement with cultural heritage through crowdsourcing'

Peer-reviewed article 'From tagging to theorizing: deepening engagement with cultural heritage through crowdsourcing' published in Curator journal

Ridge, Mia (2013). From tagging to theorizing: deepening engagement with cultural heritage through crowdsourcing. Curator: The Museum Journal, 56(4) pp. 435–450.

Proof copy available at http://oro.open.ac.uk/39117/.

Abstract: Crowdsourcing, or “obtaining information or services by soliciting input from a large number of people,” is becoming known for the impressive productivity of projects that ask the public to help transcribe, describe, locate, or categorize cultural heritage resources. This essay argues that crowdsourcing projects can also be a powerful platform for audience engagement with museums, offering truly deep and valuable connection with cultural heritage through online collaboration around shared goals or resources. It includes examples of well-designed crowdsourcing projects that provide platforms for deepening involvement with citizen history and citizen science; useful definitions of “engagement”; and evidence for why some activities help audiences interact with heritage and scientific material. It discusses projects with committed participants and considers the role of communities of participants in engaging participants more deeply.

The article was based on my keynote: 'The gift that gives twice: crowdsourcing as productive engagement with cultural heritage' for 'The Shape of Things: New and emerging technology-enabled models of participation through VGC' at the School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester.

If you found this post useful, you might be interested in my book, Crowdsourcing Our Cultural Heritage.

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Paper: Where next for open cultural data in museums?

My latest article for Museum Identity magazine, Where next for open cultural data in museums?, is now live online and in the current print issue of Museum-iD 13.

Site abstract: "Museums have increasingly been joining the global movement for open data by opening up their databases, sharing their images and releasing their knowledge. Mia Ridge presents a brief history of open cultural data projects, explores some reasons why some data is relatively under-used and looks to the future of open cultural data".

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Panel, paper: Current issues in Digital Humanities

On October I was on a panel on the Digital Humanities at the Open University – my talk notes are blogged at Notes on current issues in Digital Humanities.

I co-authored a paper titled ‘Colloquium: Digital Technologies: Help or Hindrance for the Humanities?’ (with Elton Barker, Chris Bissell, Lorna Hardwick, Allan Jones and John Wolffe), published in the ‘Digital Futures Special Issue Arts and Humanities in HE’ edition of Arts and Humanities in Higher Education.

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Chapter 'Crowdsourcing games: playing with museums'

The book 'Museums At Play: Games, Interaction and Learning' is edited by freelance strategist Katy Beale and published by MuseumsEtc.  My chapter, 'Crowdsourcing games: playing with museums' discusses the power of crowdsourcing games and the participation economy, possible new relationships with audiences and new types of engagement with objects, and the potential for an ecosystem of museum games based around collections.

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Paper: Playing with Difficult Objects – Game Designs to Improve Museum Collections

My paper for Museums and the Web 2011, Playing with Difficult Objects – Game Designs to Improve Museum Collections, is online and is also available in the printed proceedings.

Abstract: Crowdsourcing the creation, correction or enhancement of data about objects through games is an attractive proposition for museums looking to maximize use of their collections online without committing intensive curatorial resources to enhancing catalogue records. This paper investigates the optimum game designs to encourage participation and the generation of useful data through a case study of the project Museum Metadata Games that successfully designed games that created improved metadata for 'difficult' objects from two science and history museum collections.

Keywords: collections, games, crowdsourcing, objects, metadata, tagging