Communities & Crowds: Expanding Volunteer Programs Across Physical and Digital Spaces for Cultural Institutions

“社区与人群”项目为画廊、图书馆、档案馆和博物馆（GLAM）机构提供了一种新模式，通过他们的收藏品与观众进行更深入的互动，无论是面对面还是在线。该项目的最终目标是打破障碍，让新的志愿者社区参与，与机构机构合作，询问并展示遗产收藏品。通过在整个项目中结合参与式和公民科学方法，这个实验项目的结果将对博物馆实践和数字化参与的概念产生影响。在英国和美国的文化遗产组织中，志愿者是机构基础设施的重要组成部分。志愿者劳动无处不在，从艺术博物馆到天文馆都有。在文化组织内，志愿者与游客互动，与收藏品合作，并提供行政支持，以及各种不同机构的其他任务。志愿人员帮助确保机构顺利运作，即使在预算限制无法雇用额外工作人员的情况下。与此同时，志愿人员个人也从他们与博物馆的联系中受益，这是因为他们对收藏的内容感兴趣，有一种“回馈”社区的感觉，有机会进行社交，或者有面向职业的学习和积累经验。随着文化机构越来越多地利用数字技术吸引受众，这些领域也出现了对志愿人员的需求。然而，数字志愿者机会往往侧重于作为受众的志愿者，而不是作为机构团队的重要组成部分。吸引数字志愿者到遗产机构的一个例子是通过在线众包项目。众包是一种数字化参与形式，邀请志愿者通过执行有意义的任务参与机构收藏。它通常被视为一种方式，既鼓励公众参与遗产材料，又完成必要的机构数据处理任务，从而使收藏品可供更广泛的受众搜索和检索。然而，大多数众包项目都是“离线”创建的，只有在项目的目标和研究问题完全形成后才与在线志愿者分享。通过这种方式，数字志愿者被赋予了“用户”或“观众”的角色，而不是共同创造者或合作者。在“社区与人群”项目中，我们旨在重新审视志愿者在物理和数字领域的角色，其最终目标是打破等级壁垒，并为教育文化机构提供路线图，以使用在线参与作为与两者互动的模式。数字和面对面的志愿者作为机构工作人员的合作者。特别是，我们将专注于如何通过在线众包过程实现这一实践，使用Zooniverse平台作为案例研究。这项合作将包括国家科学和媒体博物馆（布拉德福德，英国）的研究人员，策展人，教育和志愿者团队，阿德勒天文馆（芝加哥，IL）和牛津大学（牛津，英国）的Zooniverse团队，以及世界各地的在线志愿者。

The 'Communities & Crowds' project offers a new model for Gallery, Library, Archive and Museum (GLAM) institutions to engage more deeply with their audiences through their collections, both in-person and online. The goal of the project is ultimately to break down barriers, and engage new volunteer communities to interrogate and make visible heritage collections in collaboration with institutional structures. By combining participatory and citizen science methodologies throughout this project, the outcomes of this experimental program will have impact for both museum practice and concepts of digital-enabled participation.In cultural heritage organizations across the UK and US, volunteers are a critical part of institutional infrastructure. Volunteer labor is ubiquitous, spanning disciplines from art museums to planetaria. Within cultural organizations, volunteers interact with visitors, work with collections, and provide administrative support, among myriad other tasks that vary across institutions. Volunteers help to ensure that institutions run smoothly, even when budget limitations prevent the hiring of additional staff. At the same time, volunteers personally benefit from their association with museums, either due to interest in the content of collections, a feeling of 'giving back' to one's community, opportunities for socialization, or career-oriented learning and experience-building. As cultural institutions increasingly make use of digital technology to engage audiences, the need for volunteers has arisen in those spaces as well. However, digital volunteer opportunities often focus on volunteers as audiences, rather than as an essential part of the institutional team. One example of attracting digital volunteers to heritage institutions is through online crowdsourcing projects. Crowdsourcing is a form of digitally-enabled participation which invites volunteers to engage with institutional collections by performing meaningful tasks. It is often viewed as a way to simultaneously encourage public engagement with heritage materials, while completing essential institutional data processing tasks that can result in making collections searchable and discoverable by a wider range of audiences. However, most crowdsourcing projects are created 'offline' and only shared with online volunteers once the project's aims and research questions are fully formed. In this way, digital volunteers are assigned the role of 'users' or 'audience', rather than as co-creators or collaborators.In the 'Communities & Crowds' project we aim to re-examine the role of the volunteer in the physical and digital realms, with the ultimate goal of breaking down hierarchical barriers and providing a roadmap for teaching cultural institutions to use online engagement as a model for interacting with both digital and in-person volunteers as collaborators with institutional staff. In particular, we will focus on how this practice can be realized through the process of online crowdsourcing, using the Zooniverse platform as a case study. This collaborative effort will include researchers, curators, educational and volunteer teams at the National Science and Media Museum (Bradford, UK), the Zooniverse teams at the Adler Planetarium (Chicago, IL) and Oxford University (Oxford, UK), and online volunteers around the world.