Library and Information Science Commons^™

Leading The Way: University Libraries Advancing Sustainable Development Goals, Modiehi Rammutloa, Lorette Jacobs

IATUL 2023 Slides

Universities play a critical role in achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through their mandate of teaching, education, research, and community engagements. Through their support of the mother body, university libraries provide access to information towards the achievement of SDGs. One way of achieving the SDGs is through citizen science. Citizen science is the involvement of community members in scientific research. The success of citizen science projects toward achieving SDGs has been vastly reported in the literature. Data produced from citizen science projects can be used towards achieving SDGs. This is where academic librarians can play a critical role in ensuring …

Creating A Public Space For Georeferencing Sanborn Maps: A Louisiana Case Study, Adam Cox

LSU Master's Theses

As institutional archives digitize their historical map collections and make them publicly available online, new methods for engaging with these materials emerge. Georeferencing the maps transforms their content from static images to dynamic map overlays, and allows for the extraction of geographic data like building footprints or place name coordinates. Many organizations have turned to crowdsourcing to georeference their large holdings, and this thesis approaches crowdsourced georeferencing from the perspective of participatory heritage, taking much inspiration from the idea of the archival commons. To test these ideas, a new extension was created for GeoNode—an open source geospatial content management system—that …

Crowdsourcing In Libraries In The Digital Age, Benil Joseph

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Information has been an intrinsic part of humanity throughout the years. Libraries and information centers have always been considered, as the custodians of information. However, with the overwhelming of information in the digital age, libraries find it difficult to deliver the right information at the right time. Despite various efforts by libraries to deliver information on time, at times the necessity of libraries is questioned. Crowdsourcing gains importance at this juncture. Today since catalogs and other allied information are mostly online, users can perform various activities like refining metadata of records, adding the new subject heading that library staff overlooked, …

Crowdsourced Pedagogy: Editing Wikipedia And The Framework For Information Literacy For Higher Education, Courtney Stine

Faculty Scholarship

Although often used by students for academic research, Wikipedia has historically been ignored or shunned by librarians in the information literacy classroom. However, as one of the most popular websites worldwide, Wikipedia matters. Visitors frequent Wikipedia to get free access to information, reference articles for background information during current events, and as a starting point for further research. Librarians can implement Wikipedia as a crowdsourced pedagogical tool for teaching students the six information literacy threshold concepts in the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education.

Writing and editing Wikipedia articles showcases the research process, requiring students to understand how …

Significance Of Open Science Approaches Towards The Fight Against Covid-19 Pandemic, Rajkumari Sofia Devi, Gyanajeet Yumnam, Ibohal Singh Ch

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The Open science approach is based on collaborative knowledge generation, and it makes accessible scientific development to the public domain through networks using advanced technologies and collaborative tools. COVID-19 pandemic put the global scientific community from different disciplines to contribute their disciplinary perspectives and research approach to address the complex issues. This pandemic has witnessed a changing scientific culture among the scientists and scholarly publishers towards a more open science approach through sharing scientific data or statistics, adoption of quick review and more accessibility by lifting paywall by journal publishers to fight the pandemic more collaboratively. The present study aims …

Occasional Groups In Crowdsourcing Platforms, Mahboobeh Harandi

Dissertations - ALL

Contributors to online crowdsourcing systems generally work independently on pieces of the product but in some cases, task interdependencies may require collaboration to develop a final product. These collaborations though take a distinctive form because of the nature of crowdsourced work. Collaboration may be implicit instead of explicit. Individuals engaged in a group conversation may not stay with the group for long, i.e., the group is an ``occasional group.'' Occasional group interactions are often not well supported by systems, as they are not designed for team work. This dissertation examines the characteristics and work of occasional groups in the Gravity …

Crowdsourcing Metadata: The Revolutionary Cataloging Interface And How It Can Help Your Library Expose And Promote Hidden Collections, Samuel T. Barber

Digital Initiatives Symposium

The crowdsourcing of metadata to expose and promote hidden collections is a significant and growing development in libraries, archives and museums, and offers hitherto unparalleled mass-collaborative potential for digital humanities projects. Originating from the field of citizen science, the online Zooniverse platform has been successfully utilized for this purpose by institutions including the Imperial War Museum, the Folger and the Huntington. This session presents recently published original research¹ in order to analyze and explain the automated quality control features of this major metadata crowdsourcing digital platform. The results, it is argued, are truly revolutionary. We conclude with a brief …

Crowdsourcing Metadata Practices At Usu, Anna-Maria Arnljots, Andrea Payant, Becky Skeen, Randy Williams

Library Faculty & Staff Presentations

No abstract provided.

Sustainable And Open Access To Valuable Legal Research Information: A New Framework, Alex Zhang, James Hart

Scholarly Articles

This article evaluates the current status of access to foreign and international legal research information, analyzes the challenges that information providers have experienced in providing valuable and sustainable access, and proposes a model that would help create and facilitate effective and sustainable access to valuable foreign, comparative, and international legal information.

Crowdsourcing Digital Public History, Jason A. Heppler, Gabriel K. Wolfenstein

Jason Heppler

The generation of communal knowledge is not a new phenomenon. In the late nineteenth century, the Oxford English Dictionary solicited volunteers to submit words and their usage for inclusion in the dictionary ( 1 ). Carl Becker, writing in 1932 on what was already an old discussion in the historical profession, noted that "if the essence of history is the memory of things said and done, then it is obvious that every normal person, Mr. Everyman, knows some history" (2). The historian Jo Guldi's work on participatory mapping shows that urban planners in the middle of the twentieth century attempted …

Crowdsourcing Law And Policy: A Design-Thinking Approach To Crowd-Civic Systems, Brian Mcinnis, Alissa Centivany, Juho Kim, Marta Pobet, Karen Levy, Gilly Leshed

FIMS Publications

Crowdsourcing technologies, strategies and methods offer new opportunities for bridging existing gaps among law, policymaking, and the lived experience of citizens. In recent years, a number of initiatives across the world have applied crowdsourcing to contexts including constitutional reform, drafting federal bills, and generating local policies. However, crowd-civic systems also come with challenges and risks such as socio-technical barriers, marginalization of specific groups, silencing of interests, etc. Using a designthinking approach, this workshop will address both opportunities and challenges of crowd-civic systems to develop best practices for increasing public engagement with law and policy. The workshop organizers will suggest an …

Crowdsourcing Management Education Assessment, Owen P. Hall Jr, Charla Griffy-Brown

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Assessment is now at the center of the new business education zeitgeist. This focus is the direct result of feedback from the business community regarding the growing gap between their needs and graduates from many business schools. Recently this divide has fallen under even closer scrutiny because of increasing student debt and the growing controversy over return-on- investment. Today business leaders are looking for web-savvy, problem-solving graduates. To this end, AACSB and regional accrediting bodies are calling for the adoption of comprehensive collaborative learning strategies to better align graduates’ skill sets with the real needs of business. Crowdsourcing, which is …

Community As Resource: Crowdsourcing Transcription Of An Historic Newspaper., Caroline Daniels, Terri L. Holtze, Rachel I. Howard, Randy Kuehn

Terri Holtze

Like many cultural heritage institutions, the Archives and Special Collections at the University of Louisville faces the dichotomy of material abundance and budgetary scarcity. Driven by the desire to make historical primary sources accessible online, this organization harnessed the power of the public to transcribe the Louisville Leader, an historic African American newspaper. The first sections of this article define crowdsourcing and describe how it was implemented at the University of Louisville, including the tools adopted and the process used. The latter sections outline the marketing strategy, the public response, and lessons learned from this ongoing project.

Crowdsourcing The Curriculum: Redefining E-Learning Practices Through Peer-Generated Approaches, Drew Paulin, Caroline Haythornthwaite

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Inclusion of open resources that employ a peer-generated approach is changing who learns what, from whom, and via what means. With these changes, there is a shift in responsibilities from the course designer to motivated and self-directed learner-participants. While much research on e-learning has addressed challenges of creating and sustaining participatory environments, the development of massive open online courses calls for new approaches that go beyond the existing research on participatory environments in institutionally defined classes. We decenter institutionally defined classes and broaden the discussion to the literature on the creation of open virtual communities and the operation of open …

Merging Special Collections With Gis Technology To Enhance The User Experience, Gina L. Nichols

School of Information Student Research Journal

This analysis evaluates how PhillyHistory.org merged their unique special collection materials with geospatial-based progressive technology to challenge and educate the global community. A new generation of technologically savvy researchers has emerged that expect a more enhanced user experience than earlier generations. To meet these needs, collection managers are collaborating with community and local institutions to increase online access to materials; mixing best metadata practices with custom elements to create map mashups; and merging progressive GIS technology and geospatial based applications with their collections to enhance the user experience. The PhillyHistory.org website was analyzed to explore how they used various geospatial …

Crowdsourcing As An Approach To Customer Relationship Building In Academic Libraries, Lisa A. Ellis, Aisha Pena

Publications and Research

Library initiatives to first-year students not only present an opportunity to offer information literacy instruction for student advancement but they also serve a key marketing function by communicating the library’s ongoing value and building customer relationships. Library orientation tours are an example of how to effectively market to first-year students. Combining peer-to-peer learning and user-generated content via social media known as crowdsourcing, Newman Library sponsored a contest challenging first-year students to create a video sharing a useful library tip. The contributions and benefits of this co-creation approach to fostering relationships are examined and the implications to strengthening other library-user bonds …

Put The Kettle On: Crowdsourcing With A Cup Of Tea, Jessica Dame

South Carolina Libraries

The South Carolina State Library (SCSL) hosted a unique crowdsourcing event to gain descriptive metadata for parts of their photographic collection from the 1960s through the 1990s. This event was the Metadata Crowdsource Retiree Tea, and was held April 15, 2015 for retirees of the SCSL. Attendees came together to provide information for 175 selected photographs while enjoying refreshments. Metadata collected included title, date, and description. Following the event, photographs were scanned and metadata was recorded. The photographs will be included in current and new digital collections in the South Carolina Digital Library.

Power To The People: A Comprehensive Look At Crowdsourcing Initiatives In Cultural Institutions, Danielle Pace

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Today, crowdsourcing has become an integrative approach to completing projects using the help of the general populous. These projects aid museum staff by processing large quantities of data, which otherwise could not be completed due to time and/or staff restraints. Through crowdsourcing, cultural institutions have the ability to outsource these tasks to volunteers, who can complete them at much faster rates. Although staff members are needed to validate and supervise these projects, crowdsourcing remains a useful tool in increasing public interactions and project efficiency.

This thesis presents a thorough outline of what crowdsourcing is, how it is being utilized, and …

Crowdsourcing Digital Public History, Jason A. Heppler, Gabriel K. Wolfenstein

Criss Library Faculty Publications

The generation of communal knowledge is not a new phenomenon. In the late nineteenth century, the Oxford English Dictionary solicited volunteers to submit words and their usage for inclusion in the dictionary ( 1 ). Carl Becker, writing in 1932 on what was already an old discussion in the historical profession, noted that "if the essence of history is the memory of things said and done, then it is obvious that every normal person, Mr. Everyman, knows some history" (2). The historian Jo Guldi's work on participatory mapping shows that urban planners in the middle of the twentieth century attempted …

Crowdsourcing Reference Help: Using Technology To Help Users Help Each Other, Ilana Stonebraker, Tao Zhang

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Librarians developed a crowdsourced web-based help system (“CrowdAsk”) which allows users (particularly undergraduates) to ask and answer questions related to library resources and services. This talk will describe CrowdAsk crowdsourcing project as well as how and why crowdsourcing can be powerful method for student engagement. Learn about a new open source technology you can implement at your library and explore new paradigms for reference focusing on users as an active and vital participant in help systems.

A Crowdsourced Library Help System, Tao Zhang, Ilana Stonebraker

Libraries Reports

Help information regarding library resources and tools is a critical part of library services, but existing help channels are often fragmented and under-maintained. Library help needs to have a centralized and engaging platform for users to receive assistance and experts including librarians, faculty, and students to share knowledge and experience. To meet this critical need, we have developed CrowdAsk, an open-source help system for academic libraries based on the concept of crowdsourcing. CrowdAsk supports voting of questions and answers by users as well as scores and badges for user motivation. Our implementation and evaluation with undergraduate classes at Purdue University …

Improving Instruction: Metaliteracy Through Crowdsourcing In The Classroom, Chris Gibson, Ilana R. Stonebraker

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Crowdsourcing is cooperation between individuals to create content. This allows for multiple insights into a problem to reach a more complete answer. Metaliteracy is “a unified construct that supports the acquisition, production, and sharing of knowledge in collaborative online communities.” (Mackey & Jacobson, Reframing Information as a Metaliteracy, 2011, 62-62) By using crowdsourced information in tandem with metaliteracy, questions can be answered more rapidly and correctly than before. Academic institutions are in the early phases of implementing crowdsourced answer systems. Crowdsourcing is already commonplace among top academic and research institutions. Projects like CERN are proof that combining resources and non-traditional …

Librarians As Wikipedians: From Library History To “Librarianship And Human Rights”, Kathleen De La Peña Mccook

School of Information Faculty Publications

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia built collaboratively using wiki software, is the most visited reference site on the web. Only 270 librarians identify as Wikipedians of 21,431,799 Wikipedians with named accounts. This needs to change. Understanding Wikipedia is essential to teaching information literacy and editing Wikipedia is essential to foster successful information-seeking behavior. Librarians who become skilled Wikipedians will maintain the centrality of librarianship to knowledge management in the 21st century—especially through active participation in crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing is the online participation model that makes use of the collective intelligence of online communities for specific purposes in this case creating and editing …

Diy History And Participatory Archives, Paul A. Soderdahl

Paul A Soderdahl

DIY History is the University of Iowa Libraries' crowdsourcing initiative with five collections: Civil War Diaries and Letters, Szathmary Cookbooks and Manuscripts, Iowa Women's Lives: Letters and Diaries, Building the Transcontinental Railroad, and Nile Kinnick. This presentation describes the DIY History project for crowdsourcing transcriptions, as well as participatory archives, and citizen science and citizen scholars.

Diy History & Participatory Archives, Paul A. Soderdahl

Paul A Soderdahl

DIY History is the University of Iowa Libraries' crowdsourcing initiative with five collections: Civil War Diaries and Letters, Szathmary Cookbooks and Manuscripts, Iowa Women's Lives: Letters and Diaries, Building the Transcontinental Railroad, and Nile Kinnick. This presentation describes the DIY History project for crowdsourcing transcriptions, as well as participatory archives, and citizen science and citizen scholars.

Internet Reviews: Crowdsourcing In Libraries And Archives, Jennifer A. Bartlett

Library Faculty and Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

A History Of Collaboration, A Future In Crowdsourcing: Positive Impacts Of Cooperation On British Librarianship, Sally Ellis

Library Staff Publications and Research

This article looks at the varying definitions and usage of the term ‘crowdsourcing,’ including those that insist the term may only be applied to online activities. An argument is made that, semantics aside, the activities known as crowdsourcing, collaboration, and/or citizen science, were in use long before the current online medium was invented and should be recognized not for the terminology employed but for the mutual benefits reaped. The article addresses the strengths of such activities, including user engagement, the accomplishment of tasks otherwise not possible because of budget cuts, and diversity of viewpoint. In addition, the possible weaknesses of …

Community As Resource: Crowdsourcing Transcription Of An Historic Newspaper., Caroline Daniels, Terri L. Holtze, Rachel I. Howard, Randy Kuehn

Faculty Scholarship

Like many cultural heritage institutions, the Archives and Special Collections at the University of Louisville faces the dichotomy of material abundance and budgetary scarcity. Driven by the desire to make historical primary sources accessible online, this organization harnessed the power of the public to transcribe the Louisville Leader, an historic African American newspaper. The first sections of this article define crowdsourcing and describe how it was implemented at the University of Louisville, including the tools adopted and the process used. The latter sections outline the marketing strategy, the public response, and lessons learned from this ongoing project.

The Aids Quilt Touch Mobile Web App, Mark Neucollins, Kelly J. Thompson, Nicole Dudley, Lauren Haldeman, Jon Winet, Kayla Haar

Kelly J. Thompson

Q: "What weighs 54 tons and can be held in the palm of your hand?" A: "The AIDS Memorial Quilt."

The AIDS Memorial Quilt is the largest living monument in the world. Composed of over 48,000 three foot by six foot individual panels, it pays tribute to the lives of more than 98,000 individuals who have died during the AIDS pandemic. Maintained by the NAMES Foundation in Atlanta, each panel is painstakingly hand-crafted by those who knew and loved these individuals. Each panel carries the emotional weight of a life lived, of loving relationships, and of heartfelt loss.

Our interdisciplinary …

Crowdsourcing Transcriptions Of Archival Materials, Aaron G. Noll

Graduate History Conference, UMass Boston

Crowdsourcing is a method that has been effectively used to pool the knowledge and skills of large numbers of online volunteers for the creation of information resources utilized by historians, genealogists, and scientists. In recent years, archivists have begun to crowdsource the transcription of their handwritten records. Transcription of such records has traditionally been completed by professional transcribers who are skilled in reading multiple handwriting styles, knowledgeable about the creators and historical context of the records, and can interpret varying record formats and genres. However, increasingly limited resources of time and money have made traditional transcription more difficult to accomplish. …