Engaging crowds: citizen research and heritage data at scale

公众参与遗产研究有可能吸引新的受众，让大众参与大规模分析和生成数据，并为我们的国家藏品提供新的视角。释放这一潜力的关键是不同受众的有效参与，以及在收集发现平台内创建和重用数据的工作流程的开发，用于培训自动化系统，并向公民和研究人员提供访问权限。我们将确定扩展和深化跨社区参与的方法，为未来的公民研究项目提出一个具有遗产数据的最佳实践框架，为其设计和建模提供信息。公民研究和自动化是捕获和描述我们越来越多的模拟、数字和数字化数据的两种互补方法。我们建议在项目最初的重点之外，通过开发数据重用的工作流程来阐明它们之间的协同作用，从而为当前和未来的奖学金提供解决新研究问题的潜力。在爱丁堡皇家植物园（RBGE）、格林威治皇家博物馆（RMG）和国家档案馆（TNA）这三个具有丰富公民研究经验的iro的领导下，以及牛津大学Zooniverse的世界领先的公民研究专业知识，其独特的免费、开源基础设施、全球190万志愿者社区，以及交付190多个众包项目的技术专长。这个项目的独特之处在于研究和原型工具，通过公民研究与我们的藏品进行更深入的接触：创造一个良性循环，增加和更好地了解公众参与，引导社区大规模地创建更多的藏品数据。该项目将汇集各部门的专业知识，以扩大我们的公民研究社区，并确保有效地再利用众包数据。这将通过解决下列问题来实现：我们如何才能最好地让全国各地的志愿者参与公民研究项目，以进一步加深对我们藏品的共同理解？现有的哪些方法和数据能够最成功地衡量用户粘性？通过公民研究项目的数据来引导自己的道路的能力如何影响对项目的参与？我们如何验证、评估、呈现和评价公民研究的贡献？我们如何在收集发现平台中重用众包数据，用于培训自动化系统，并向公民和研究人员提供访问权限，以支持和鼓励进一步的参与、重用和分析？容易获得由公民研究项目创建的数据会影响参与项目吗？还需要哪些工具来实现对这些数据的有意义的访问？

Public participation in heritage research has the potential to engage new audiences, to enlist the crowd in analysing and generating data at scale, and to invite new perspectives on our national collections. Key to releasing this potential is effective engagement of diverse audiences, and the development of workflows for the creation and re-use of data within collection discovery platforms, for training automated systems, and to give access to the citizens and researchers.We will identify ways of extending and deepening engagement across communities, proposing a best-practice framework for future citizen research projects with heritage data, informing their design and modelling. Citizen research and automation are two complementary methods for capturing and describing our increasing quantities of analogue, digital and digitised data. We propose articulating the synergies between them by developing workflows for the re-use of data beyond projects' initial focuses to provide current and future scholarship with the potential to address new research questions.Led by three IROs with significant experience of citizen research, Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh (RBGE), Royal Museums Greenwich (RMG) and The National Archives (TNA), and the world-leading citizen research expertise of the University of Oxford's Zooniverse with its distinctive free, open source infrastructure, community of 1.9 million volunteers worldwide, and technical expertise of having delivered over 190 crowdsourcing projects, this project is uniquely placed to research and prototype tools for deeper engagement with our collections through citizen research: to create a virtuous circle of increased and better informed public engagement that leads communities to create more collections data at scale.The project will convene expertise from across sectors to expand our citizen research community and to ensure the effective re-use of crowd-sourced data. This will be achieved by addressing the following questions:1. How can we best engage volunteers across the nation's communities with citizen research projects, to further a shared understanding of our collections? What existing methods and data are the most successful for measuring that engagement?2. How does the ability to navigate one's own path through the data of a citizen research project affect engagement with the project?3. How can we verify, assess, present, and value the contributions of citizen research?4. How can we enable the re-use of crowd-sourced data within collection discovery platforms, for training automated systems, and to give access to citizens and researchers that supports and encourages further engagement, re-use and analysis?5. Does easy access to data created by citizen research projects affect engagement with projects? What other tools are necessary to enable meaningful access to this data?