Crowdsourcing Europe: Improving access, usability and enriching data on 385 million natural history specimens

Presentation given by Laurence Livermore at the The NBN Crowdsourcing Data Capture Summit. 25 September 2015. Manchester Museum.

Abstract: For natural history museums crowdsourcing label transcription for their specimens makes it viable to capture large amounts of data for scientific research. We introduce the crowdsourcing strategy for SYNTHESYS3, a consortium with 18 partners that together hold over 385 million specimens.

The major specimen label transcription platforms are compared, case studies of previous crowdsourcing projects are given, accuracy of crowdsourcing is discussed along with participant motivation, support & rewards, and key areas for organisational investment.

The crowdsourcing platform requirements for the SYNTHESYS Consortium are summarised along with a roadmap and an announcement of the partnership with the Smithsonian Institution's Transcription Centre.