The idea was not new, but with the internet it became much easier to exploit ‘the wisdom of crowds’. Well-known examples of crowdsourcing are open-source software and Wikipedia. You can also think of social tagging (Flickr, Amazon), social bookmarking (Digg, Reddit, Delicious etc.) and review sites such as Tripadvisor or Zoover. A nice example from a completely different angle is the crowdsourced film “Life in a day”: on June 24, 2010, anyone who wanted to could film a piece of his or her life and upload it. There were 80,000 entries , a total of 5,000 hours of film and that was made into a film by Ridley Scott and Kevin Macdonald. It premiered on January 27 at the Sundance festival.
‘A through crowdsourcing. But conversely, crowdsourcing does not always aim to arrive at a synthesis, a consensus or an romania phone number list average. Crowdsourcing can also mean: involving people, letting people think along, entering into a relationship with the public.
The idea of having the public participate in the creation of an exhibition was not entirely new, it had been done in the past. People were called upon in the newspaper to contribute photographic material from a certain period. But the internet makes it much easier. In museumland, crowdsourcing has become an important trend. The ‘manual’ of this trend is The Participatory Museum by Nina Simon.
What does a museum do with crowdsourcing?
There are several ways in which crowdsourcing is used within the heritage sector.
A museum may be looking for additional knowledge about a particular historical or art historical subject. This involves crowdsourcing of the Wikipedia type. The contributions will mainly come from experts, whether they are professionals or amateurs.
The museum may also be looking for (ego) documents and objects. The group of potential contributors is then already larger.
The museum can also be looking for stories, images or memories. And at that point, almost anyone who is interested is eligible. This form of crowdsourcing obviously works best for contemporary history.
After all, it appeals to people
A who are currently living. And there is a limit to the memories and handed down stories of people who are currently living, which is probably about a century back.
The museum is looking for extra hands. An example of the latter is the Victoria&Albert museum, which asks checklist: how to choose a name for an online store? people online to help crop images . This calls for certain skills.
Sometimes the public is even asked to play a role in evaluating and organizing the material Wisdom of crowds american samoa business directory as the Brooklyn Museum once did. This ties in with the social tagging and social bookmarking mentioned earlier. Here too, the group of potential participants is large.