JISC

Arfon Smith

Galaxy Zoo is one of the world's largest and most successful online citizen science projects, recruiting almost a quarter of a million volunteers to the task of galaxy classification. Along the way users have discovered unique objects which have been followed up with facilities including the Hubble Space Telescope, led their own research projects and formed a vibrant community. The project's technical lead, Arfon Smith will reflect on the success of Galaxy Zoo and talk about how the project has demonstrated the significant value of user-generated content.

Kate Lindsay

The Great War Archive initiative was a national scheme run between March and June 2008. Funded by Phase 2 of the JISC Digitisation Programme, as part of Oxford University’s First World War Poetry Digital Archive, the project harvested the general publics’ potential for digitisation to build a ‘community collection’ of digitised memorabilia and stories relating to the First World War. Members of the public were invited to submit digitised items and basic metadata via a simple web site, or at one of the projects organised submission days held at public libraries and museums across the country. In just 16 weeks over 6,500 items were submitted to the archive, at a fraction of the cost of more formal institutional digitisation schemes, largely achieved through shifting the costs to the public contributor.

The Great War Archive has presented a model for others to follow. Not only was it extremely cost effective, it also released material previously unseen, and engaged the general public in a University project. Teachers regularly download material to illustrate their lessons on the First World War across a range of topics, to bring the subject alive and to captivate learners. For researchers, both those attached to academic institutions, genealogists, local historians, and those just simply interested in following their own interest in the subject, new material is providing new avenues of research. We are regularly contacted by members of the public who have been able to trace new histories within their families and communities as a result. The novel approach of  the initiative and early indicators of its impact has earned the project highly commended status’ at both the Times Higher Awards and UCISA Award for Excellence 2008.

Regardless of whether we agree or do not agree with the continued funding of the large digitization projects, what the Great War Archive illustrates is that there is another area we could be exploring. In particular the mobilization of the public to contribute digitized items and knowledge to national initiatives. In this presentation Kate Lindsay, project manager, will tell the story of the Great War Archive, the workflows used and the lessons learned, outlining the impact that the initiative has had on scholarly processes since it's launch.