Contribute to Crowdsourcing Historic Documents
With the lazy days of summer approaching, why not relax while contributing some of your time to some library research. A couple major libraries have received global attention for their successful efforts in crowdsourcing the transcription of archived work.
Game lovers can compete in a digital archiving game from the National Library of Finland. The library is working to index its enormous archives so that they are searchable on the Internet, enabling easy access to the country’s cultural heritage.
The National Library of Finland, the biggest and oldest scientific library in Finland, has copied about 4 million pages into computer databases, including newspapers, maps and other valuable documents from the 18th to 20th centuries. Ensuring the material, which has been entered using computerized text recognition, is easily searchable, requires manual work to improve the quality.
The game stars cartoon moles and players earn points by entering correct answers that help the characters build bridges and grow flowers.
Foodies might enjoy getting involved with the New York Public Library project to archive their collection of historic restaurant menus. As in the Finnish project, the goal of this effort is to build a historic database, including dishes, prices, menu sections and geographic locations.
According to the site, the database will aid researchers— from historians, chefs, nutritional scientists, or novelists— answer specific questions. Where were oysters served in 19th century New York and how did their varieties and cost change over time? When did apple pie first appear on the Library’s menus? What about pizza? What was the price of a cup of coffee in 1907? To find out these sorts of things more easily, we need to extract, though transcription, all the data within the digital menu photos.
Even those who aren’t interested in participating in the work, might enjoy the cuisine tidbits on the project’s blog.
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