Choosing Crowdsourced Transcription Platforms at SSA 2013
Transcript of Ben Brumfield’s presentation at the Society of Southwestern Archivists. Audio available.
Ben covers the principles of crowd sourced projects, such as:
Now, I’m an open source developer, and in the open source world we tend to differentiate between “free as in beer” or “free as in speech”.
Crowdsourcing projects are really “free as in puppy”. The puppy is free, but you have to take care of it; you have to do a lot of work. Because volunteers that are participating in these things don’t like being ignored. They don’t like having their work lost. They’re doing something that they feel is meaningful and engaging with you, therefore you need to make sure their work is meaningful and engage with them.
For the details on tools, Ben points us to: Collaborative Transcription Tools.
You will need the technology side for a crowd sourced project, topic map related or not.
But don’t neglect the human side of such a project. At least if you want a successful project.