Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Crowdsourcing

In an October blog post, Lorcan Dempsey uses the word "crowdsourcing" to describe the way that the National Library of Australia is adding content to its digital collections. What is crowdsourcing? Lorcan, elsewhere, says:
According to Wikipedia Crowdsourcing is a term coined by Wired magazine writer Jeff Howe and editor Mark Robinson. Crowdsourcing relies upon unpaid or low-paid amateurs who use their spare time to create content, solve problems, even do corporate R & D. [YRUHRN? - Crowdsourcing: Many Voices]
Perhaps you should think about whether there is a way that you can use crowdsourcing to increase or improve your digitization program?


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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Crowdsourcing seems to be the basic idea behind most "social media", from blogs to social bookmarking sites.

As people are unpaid (although according to your quote, also includes low pay), one must recognise that people are not doing it for money. They are doing it for a variety of reasons such as: personal interest, public recognition, altruistic behaviour, enjoyment of the interaction and so on.

Consequently, one must carefully think about the non-monetary pay which motivates people to do this work. Only when one can provide this, will a substantial number of qualified workers be willing to contribute their personal time.

Of course, after this there are various other challenges. For example, managing disputes and differing opinions among the volunteer work force.