Editing Expeditions & Explorers on Wikipedia: Tips & Tricks
TSC_CIOPres_FINALrev2_06May13_07Feb16
1. Opening Collections & Inviting Audiences to
“Seriously Amazing”
Opportunities
06 May 2013
Smithsonian Institution
Transcription Services Center
2. Smithsonian Institution
Transcription Services Center
Smithsonian Institution Transcription
Services Center (SI TSC) offers an
interactive learning space and flexible
approach to growing audiences and
knowledge.
SI TSC allows us to link the rapidly changing
online experience with physical collections
and partner institutions; as we develop
access to successfully digitized SI resources
held in digital spaces.
3. With Success in SI Digitization Objectives,
Some Challenges Emerge
As we increase volume of digitized collections
and open access, in what ways can we:
– Improve and Increase the Quality of Engagement?
– Increase Access and Use of Resources?
– Create Pathways of Learning and New Knowledge?
– Maintain and Build Trust with Communities of
Interest, Stakeholders, and Audiences?
4. SI-wide
Objectives:
• Open Data
• Increased Access
• Knowledge
Diffusion
Unit Needs:
• Transcribing
• Sharing
Solution:
An opportunity to bring together
SI Objectives, Unit Needs, and Audiences
5. Objectives Meeting Needs
Baekeland’s Diary has been digitized and is accessible through
Collections Search Service… is the knowledge within easily accessible?
6. Objectives Meeting Needs
Baekeland writes a letter to
the Globe, responding to
“the pessimistic utterance of
Mr. Schiff, the banker, who
does not know what is going
to become of all our
immigrants. I doubt whether
they will publish my letter.”
Digitized but unsearchable –
uncovering relevant
historical context presents a
true need to be met
If the contents of the journal are transcribed, then the details can be
categorized and discoverable through various search methods
7. What will help units meet their needs as
digitization objectives continue to be met?
Transcription by volunteers –
Crowdsourced Participation
8. Crowdsourcing Participation for
Transcription
• What is crowdsourcing?
– “obtain (information or input into a particular task
or project) by enlisting the services of a number of
people, either paid or unpaid, typically via the
Internet”* - Oxford English Dictionary, 2013
• In reality, crowdsourcing has been integral to
Smithsonian Institution practices and certainly
predates the internet as a communal and
collaborative phenomenon
9. Notable Moments of Crowdsourcing
• Oxford English Dictionary:
The result of a 70 year crowd-sourced adventure in
mapping language – volunteers worked through books
and marked first instances of new words (1858-1928)
• Secretary Joseph Henry and the Weather:
Henry recruited “citizen scientists” across
North and South American to telegraph
daily weather reports, starting in 1849;
these efforts created the first National
weather map and service
10. Crowdsourcing Models
• Knowledge building: Wikipedia, Encyclopedia of
Life (EOL), Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL)
• Identifying Materials: Flickr (SI Archives, BHL)
• Sharing resources: Google docs during Boston
Marathon bombing
• Competition and Competitive Collaboration:
Building Models or Developing programming
• Teaching and Learning: GitHub, WordPress, other
web developers resources
• Funding: Kickstarter, Indie-go-go, Charity Events
Models that suit the intial objectives of the
Smithsonian Institution Transcription Services
Center
11. Crowdsourcing Vital Information
The Power of the Crowd: Google Person Finder and Google Docs
offered vital information and places for people to stay or find shelter
and food in a time of uncertainty in Boston
12. Benefits of Crowdsourced Participation
• Small groups of people performing distributed tasks
for greater effect
• Small steps to great volumes of work
• Participation as investment and belonging
• Participation in our model of transcription
– prepares audiences for participation in related future
or yet-to-be determined models
– opens doors to new knowledge creation and future
research opportunities
13. Engaging & Cultivating Audiences
• “Engage the public in helping us build knowledge
about existing collections, conduct research & make
the information we generate available & accessible”
- J. Abrams, 03/20/2013
• Cultivating an audience that participates in
innovative ways
– Leading that audience to adopt a new way of
thinking about Smithsonian Institution resources:
viewing the institution as a trusted digital
knowledge repository
14. Three Models of Transcription
• NYPL: What’s on the Menu
• DIY History – University of Iowa Libraries
• Zooniverse: Old Weather
These three models are examples of successful
transcription projects with varying interfaces,
levels of required registration, badging, and
subject matter.
15. The What’s on the menu? interface is simple and effective with a
clearly stated purpose; also leads to the next project (mapping).
17. DIY History:
Manuscripts, Diaries, Correspondence
http://diyhistory.lib.uiowa.edu/transcribe/collections/show/7
The DIY History interface leads users to choose between projects; users
may register or participate without registry and also review and edit.
18. DIY History: Needs Review (Call to Action)
An example of diary pages that need review – the interface calls the
user to action by highlighting each piece that “needs review.”
19. Old Weather is an engaging interface for “citizen science.” Users must
register but are rewarded for progress by earning rank.
20. Old Weather:
Predicting the Future from the Past
Old Weather collects specific details, using templates, from ship logs to
re-create weather conditions and predict future weather models.
21. Considering SI Unit Objectives and Needs
• In prioritizing what kind of tool to create for
transcription, we consider again our objectives
and needs for specific projects
• Also consider the kinds of materials that have
been digitized and their formats
• Allows us to build compelling stories around
materials
• Allows us to create templates for the formats
of material for ease of transcription
22. Formats of Materials for Transcription
Field Book Project formats
• Narratives
• Lists
• Tabular data
• Cards (Records)
• Photographs with
annotations
• Illustrations with
annotations
32. Catalog Card: A template to define specific information from fields on
the card; another call for login to track progress & earn awards
33. SI Transcription Services Center
• Participation that matters!
• Opportunities to learn from SI collections from
specific-to-broad (rather than an in-person model
of broad-to-specific)
• Improve digital experiences of audiences and
coherence with SI branding based around
“seriously amazing”
• Facilitates trust in SI as digital repository: users
invested in the transparent, open, accessible
process
34. SI TSC: Proposed Results and Benefits
• Greater degree of accessibility and usefulness of
the transcribed material for future researchers
• The ability to discover new levels of knowledge
and subject matter relationships through
previously impossible digital analyses
• Enhancement of knowledge of Unit collections
• Promotes learning along the Grand Challenges
• Serves as a model for other cultural heritage
institutions
35. Smithsonian Institution
Transcription Services Center
More broadly, SI TSC offers a
learning space and flexible
approach to developing access to
resources in digital spaces: linking
the rapidly changing online
experience with physical collections
to continue to provide “seriously
amazing” experiences.
Editor's Notes
Smithsonian Institution Transcription Services Center (SI TSC) –
a. An interactive space for audiences
b. Flexible and can be changed to suit project needs and evolving SI and Unit goals
c. Allows us to create pathways & experiences with digitized resources
d. And link these resources to physical collections & experiences (“seriously amazing”)
We are rapidly pursuing SI-wide digitization goals –a. Succeeding in these goals means that our materials are accessible online –
b. But other challenges have emerged - the digitized contents are still hard to access, difficult to share.
c. With that in mind, in what ways can we:
Improve and Increase the Quality of Engagement?
Increase Access and Use of Resources?
Create Pathways of Learning and New Knowledge?
Maintain and Build Trust with Communities of Interest, Stakeholders, and Audiences?
SI-wide including Units have objectives -
opening resources,
improving access,
increasing knowledge sharing
Yet Units also have specific needs relating to that content–
help with transcribing digitized materials and
sharing that information more widely
The solution is a centralized place for these activities: Transcription Services Center
An Example: Baekeland’s journals have been digitized but the information IN the digitized content is still not easily accessible (shot of digital content in Collections Search Center)
Baekeland’s writes briefly about engaging with immigration debates to the Globe –
These are beliefs about immigration that could be relevant to today’s debates –
Yet this information is “locked” inside the digitized form
we need the public’s help to turn the key and release this knowledge
(segue slide for Crowdsourcing Participation in Transcription)
Crowdsourcing is using information gathered from a group of people – paid or unpaid – to develop a project or service –
Currently, this is perceived to happen via the Internet
Yet crowdsourcing is NOT new –
it has been a part of SI practice from the beginning and predates the internet as a collaborative activity
OED & National weather map and service
Crowdsourcing is quite diverse.
These are different kinds of projects – described by goals – that use crowdsourcing techniques
The top two models of knowledge-building and identifying material relate most closely to the initial objectives of the Transcription Services Center
Crowdsourcing as public service
Recent example of vital information shared by people during the Boston Marathon bombing – gathering and sharing information digitally - in an area for others who are accessing material remotely
Specifically for cultural heritage institution projects and programmes - and thinking strategically about participation, investment, engagement, and cultivating new audiences and knowledge
*Simple interface
*Does NOT require registration (low commitment, high reward)
*Clearly stated purpose – “transcribing our historical restaurant menus, dish by dish, so that they can be searched by what people were eating back in the day”
*Call to action – “it’s a big job so we need your help”
*Leading to future participation – INVITING participants to map (geotag/geolocate) restaurant locations to sync with menus, and particularly ones the participants have transcribed
*Example of the look and interaction with the digitized menu –
*users click on item: template opens for transcription of that particular piece of the menu
*users click on checkmarks to edit entries, if necessary
*Colorful, graphic interface
*Registration optional; if registered, participation is tallied/tracked
*Buttons and calls to action “help us build the historical record by doing it yourself”
*Options to transcribe, correct or review content and tag and categorize content
The user is called to action by a category of pages that “need review” - Diary pages have been transcribed but still need to be verified by another user to be accepted as complete
*This is an excellent way to keep audiences engaged by appealing to different learning styles and “skills” – in the case of reviewing, users with good editing or proofreading skills will feel valued
Engaging and graphical interface – clear introduction, “how it works”, explanation and videos of “why scientists need you” to help the project
Registration REQUIRED – but progress is tracked and status rises through work in transcription
Statistics about progress toward project goals
Examples of information learned “so far” through transcription of digitized ship logs
An example of the template style for this kind of transcription.
The Old Weather project is seeking very specific information to recreate weather conditions of the past and predict future weather patterns.
These format-specific templates are important to consider for SI unit project goals
Building objectives and needs into design – also flexibility to address the specifics of projects
Examples of material formats (for template design), taken from the digitized content of the Field Book Project, one of the SI TSC pilot projects
(segue slide)
“Home” page with Transcription Center Branding on the left.
On the header and top right are drop down menus for one method of navigation
Alternatively, A rotating carousel shows highlighted collections and another way to navigate projects.
The current project on display is Mr. Baekeland’s Journal – and an example of that journal was provided earlier (re: immigration)
In three columns across the footer are:
-the call to action and purpose statement
-trending or popular projects
-transcription and participant statistics.
A drop-down menu allows users to browse our transcription projects by the Smithsonian grand challenge areas, and by other categories as listed.
For example: Clicking on Featured will allow the users to read more in details about the featured projects.
The Featured page provides more description and statistical details by projects.
This listing also provides a browse function to scan through possible collections.
This display function works the same way for other categories such as by museum, latest transcription projects, etc.
Additionally, project progress and calls to action are demonstrated visually by status bars at the top of project widgets - “red” for critical help needed or “yellow” for partially complete.
This is a detailed display for a transcription project.
The display includes project description, transcription activities, as well as a browsing view of the individual asset in this project.
Social media links are available to allow sharing.
The Transcription Center is driven by different transcription templates.
The format of a Template is specifically tailored to the format of material in a project.
This template is built to transcribe the catalog card – here the green section and red section are collected separately.
Also notice the Template display format. In this case, the image is displayed above the transcription fields in a vertical format.
In this example, the same catalog card is displayed side by side and can be adjusted by clicking on the horizontal format icon.
Other buttons are to allow browse to the next or previous asset, or share the card to others, or go home.
This final template example shows a catalog card which needs lots of specific data fields matching up to the project.
In all cases, the users are prompted to log in in order to track their progress and gain credits and received badges as awards.
Log in will be optional. In the case of a user choose not to log in, the system will present “Captcha” for each save/submit of transcribed text to avoid spam.
More broadly, SI TSC offers a learning space and flexible approach to developing access to resources in digital spaces: linking the rapidly changing online experience with physical collections to continue to provide “seriously amazing” experiences.
