Crowdsourcing offers an interesting opportunity for the general public to engage with scholars and project leaders to complete a common goal. Historian and Archivist Trevor Owens notes in his blog that crowdsourcing can offer a sense of purpose to many individuals, especially those who are affected by the cultural resource projects being done. Many people ask why humans must complete these tasks and why computers cannot complete these projects through AI or OCR (Optical Character Recognition). Owens notes, “The value human computation offers is the question of how the unique capabilities of people can be integrated into systems for the creation of public goods.” Human beings can offer emotion and understanding in important cultural aspects that computers just simply cannot.
To explore online crowdsourcing projects for myself, I initially attempted to explore the unpublished projects of Jeremy Bentham, but unfortunately, I had many problems with the program being unable to verify my account, or even allow me to use the software. From here, I changed gears and decided to explore the What’s on the Menu? project from the New York Public Library.
Unlike my other efforts, the What’s on the Menu? project proved to be extremely user-friendly and functioned even better than I initially expected. One of the most convenient aspects of this project is that it does not require users to create an account or log in to contribute to the project, as many other programs do.
As for the usability of What’s on the Menu?, the online source has an “About” section, that has extremely clear guidelines for how to properly use the crowdsourcing program; from what to transcribe, how to transcribe, and other pertinent information about the platform.
This crowdsourcing project seemed to be rather popular, as the project has transcribed 17,562 menus with 1,335,491 dishes!
Since the project has been so popular, there are no more new menus to be transcribed, only sections to be reviewed by others. This review process is extremely important in crowdsourcing projects, or truly any project, to ensure the best data is provided for future researchers and for use by screen readers for accessibility purposes.
Projects like the What’s on the Menu? project are extremely beneficial for understanding many aspects of collected data for research purposes, such as the frequency of a dish in restaurants in New York and what time period they were popular. Information like this can be beneficial for historians and other researchers, and would be virtually unavailable without the collective efforts of larger crowdsourcing projects similar to What’s on the Menu?
Overall, I think the What’s on the Menu? project was extremely interesting and easy to use. Debates on whether crowdsourcing is truly a beneficial resource for public history and cultural resource projects or taking advantage of “free labor” is another conversation entirely.
Have you used any crowdsourced data in any of your research projects? Or have you participated in any similar projects? Let me know down below if you have any thoughts or opinions on crowdsourcing or any projects to recommend.
-Dakota