Bringing Citizen Scientists and Historians Together

foeromeo — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 21:08:39 +0000

MW2011

Fiona Romeo and Lucinda Blaser, National Maritime Museum, United Kingdom

http://www.oldweather.org | http://www.solarstormwatch.com

Abstract

This paper outlines how citizen science projects Solar Stormwatch and Old Weather play to the potentially different motivations of science and history enthusiasts. It draws on informal feedback from the forums and other social channels but also references well-documented crowdsourcing projects Galaxy Zoo and the Australian Newspapers Digitisation Program. It concludes with recommendations for attracting both lightweight contributions and sustained collaboration in online volunteering projects.

Keywords: citizen science, crowdsourcing, digitisation, communities, science, history

Program Item Reference:

Bringing citizen scientists and historians together

foeromeo — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 00:54:14 +0000

MW2011

Published Paper:

Bringing Citizen Scientists and Historians Together

Keywords:

citizen science

Keywords:

crowdsourcing

Keywords:

motivations

Keywords:

history

Keywords:

science

Keywords:

transcription

Abstract:

The National Maritime Museum invited the Naval-History.net community to join the Zooniverse citizen science platform to help extract meteorological data from historic ship logs. The data generated via the Old Weather website will be used by scientists at the Met Office to build better climate models. The project will also deliver a reusable infrastructure for distributed transcription.

The motivations of volunteers in established astronomy projects, such as Galaxy Zoo, are well understood and described in a comprehensive study (Galaxy Zoo: Exploring the Motivations of Citizen Science Volunteers). This paper will explore the – potentially – different motivations of the Naval-History.net community, paying particular attention to informal interactions between science and history enthusiasts on the forums.

It will be written in collaboration with community leaders from both Naval-History.net and the Zooniverse, and with reference to other distributed transcription projects, such as the Australian Newspapers Digitisation Program and Transcribe Bentham.

Sites to be discussed:

Type:

Paper - in formal session

User-Generated Community

Site:

http://www.oldweather.org

Authors:

Fiona Romeo

Lucinda Blaser

museumsandtheweb.com - citizen science

Bringing Citizen Scientists and Historians Together

Fiona Romeo and Lucinda Blaser, National Maritime Museum, United Kingdom

Abstract

Bringing citizen scientists and historians together