Crowdsourcing is work done by a collective group of people on the same efforts. Crowdsourcing can come in different forms, but for our purposes of exploring the advantages of crowdsourcing, I chose to work on a project that requires contributors to transcribe historical documents. Beyond Borders: Transcribing Historic Maine Land Documents was a project that I found to be the easiest to work with. The pages opens with an extensive tutorial that is not overly technical.
The tutorial went through various situations that a collaborator could encounter with links to the field guide, another pop up box with links to other sections with a lot of information beyond those on the tutorial.
After the tutorial, a random document pops up. Users have no choice in what document to transcribe and there are steps to how to transcribe. I did not encounter any documents that had no transcription in the hour or so that I worked on this project. Even though there may not be any new transcriptions to complete, the website requires content to be checked or corrected at least three times before it is considered complete. A section of a transcription is based on rows, a line is “drawn” underneath the text then that line is transcribed to the best of someone’s ability. After the initial transcription, the next two people check or correct the one before them. Once a text is checked three times, it is considered complete and cannot be edited. The dot-system image above explains that a green dot is the initial transcription, blue has been reviewed once, and grey is a complete line. A section of a transcription is based on rows, a line is “drawn” underneath the text then that line is transcribed to the best of someone’s ability. After the initial transcription, the next two people check or correct the one before them. Once a text is checked three times, it is considered complete and cannot be edited. To ensure this system, the site requires you to check a box if the entire page has been completely checked before moving on to a new document.
Overall, I had a lot of fun with the Maine documents, I spent more time transcribing than I initially thought due to how easy the process was to complete. Thanks to the tutorial and readily available field guide, I believe that any level of skill would be enough to transcribe a few lines. The image resolution of the documents is high and the zoom features work great. Historians can use this source to practice their transcription skills or those who are studying Maine’s history could have access to hundreds of primary sources from letters to account book pages.
If you give this crowdsource project a try, let me know what you think!