Selected Readings

On this page, you will find a list of selected readings that will help you get started with crowdsourcing.
To suggest readings for this page, please contact us!

What is Crowdsourcing?

Howe, J. (2006, June). The Rise of Crowdsourcing. Wired, 14.

• This article coined the term “crowdsourcing”, introducing the concept to many companies and business for the first time. 

Owens, T. (2013) Digital Cultural Heritage and the Crowd. Curator: The Museum Journal, Vol. 56. Iss. 1.

• This article covers many diverse topics, such as crowdsourcing definitions, challenges and user motivations specifically related to libraries and archives. 

Breaking it Down

Dunn, S. & Hedges, M. Crowdsourcing Communities: Crowd-sourcing in the Humanities: A Scoping Study. 

• These materials break down the idea of crowdsourcing into many smaller, more implementable actions. 

Ooman, J. & Aroyo, L. (2011). Crowdsourcing in the Cultural Heritage Domain: Opportunities and Challenges. Internationales Institut für Sozio-Informatik.

• This article dissects different crowdsourcing projects into classifications such as co-curation, classification and crowdfunding while also providing an overview of different user motivations for involvement. 

Key Projects

Ridge, M. (Ed.). (2014). Crowdsourcing our cultural heritage. Farnham, Surrey, England: Ashgate.

• (from the Publisher’s description) “This book brings together for the first time the collected wisdom of international leaders in the theory and practice of crowdsourcing in cultural heritage. It features eight accessible case studies of groundbreaking projects from leading cultural heritage and academic institutions, and four thought-provoking essays that reflect on the wider implications of this engagement for participants and on the institutions themselves.”

Voss, Jon, Gabriel Wolfenstein and Kerri Young. From crowdsourcing to knowledge communities: Creating meaningful scholarship through digital collaboration. MW2015: Museums and the Web 2015. Published February 1, 2015. Consulted May 12, 2015.

• Case Study of three pilot projects by Stanford University and Historypin, “testing how humanities researchers might use different types of crowdsourcing or community sourcing to further research, and to ask questions that would be difficult or impossible to answer in more traditional modes of inquiry.”
• “In this paper, we share the details of the various projects and their outcomes, as well as a host of tools we found helpful in the process of identification, outreach, and collaboration with knowledge communities.”

L. Carletti, D. McAuley, D. Price and G. Giannachi, Digital Humanities and Crowdsourcing: An Exploration. In Museums and the Web 2013, N. Proctor & R. Cherry (eds). Silver Spring, MD: Museums and the Web. Published February 5, 2013.

• This article introduces the concept of crowdsourcing for digital humanities, as well as providing multiple case studies and examples. 

Vershbow, B. (2013). NYPL Labs- Hacking the Library. Journal Of Library Administration, 53(1), 79-96. doi:10.1080/01930826.2013.756701

• This article details how the New York Public Library’s Labs have made strides in the field of crowdsourcing research and development. 

Ellis, S. (2014). A History of Collaboration, a Future in Crowdsourcing- Positive Impacts of Cooperation on British Librarianship. Libri: International Journal Of Libraries & Information Services, 64(1), 1-10. doi:10.1515/libri-2014-0001

• This article covers a diverse group of British case studies such as FamilySearch, the British Museum, as well as the Sounds of the UK and Ancient Lives projects. 

Daniels, C., Holtze, T. L., Howard, R. I., & Kuehn, R. (2014). Community as Resource- Crowdsourcing Transcription of Historic Newspapers. Journal Of Electronic Resources Librarianship, 26(1), 36-48. doi:10.1080/1941126X.2014.877332

• This article covers challenges and opportunities specific to a crowdsourced transcription project.

Spindler, R. (2014). An Evaluation of Crowdsourcing and Participatory Archives Projects for Archival Description and Transcription