ViMM – Working Group 3.2 collected various kinds of Citizen Science projects that might help improve the documentation of virtual cultural heritage in general and virtual exhibitions in specific. The collection and discussion of such projects is continuing. So far the discussions in the Working Group revealed that (apart from translation projects) most of them are in the realm of natural science and nearly none is yet directly focussing the improvement of documentation of virtual cultural heritage or virtual exhibition.
Below you find the list of projects discussed so far. If you know relevant Citizen Science projects, please help us in enlarging the list.
| Project Name | Description | Keywords | Other |
| Altes Leipzig | With the support of citizens of Leipzig the project tries to create a virtual city archive by collecting data of former inhabitants and buildings from the last 300 years. | collecting | |
| Anno Tate | AnnoTate is a transcription tool developed to enable volunteers to read and transcribe the personal papers of British-born and émigré artists. Drawn from the world’s largest archive of British Art – Tate Archive – participants can help to provide full text transcriptions of handwritten documents, helping to reveal the inspiration and stories behind some of the greatest works of the past century. | transcription | |
| Art Detective | Art Detective aims to improve knowledge of the UK’s public art collection. It is an award-winning, free-to-use online network that connects public art collections with members of the public and providers of specialist knowledge. Launched in March 2014, Art Detective comprises a digital network built on top of Art UK’s existing art object database. Art Detective is accessed through the Art UK website. | art history, history, art, contextualisation, description, complementing, co-curating | Art UK |
| Artigo | The project started in the early 2000s. User add tags to images of artworks. The same technical environment is used for language learning. A similar project was launched for photographs with a colonial background by Berlin Museum. | art history, art, tagging | LMU München |
| Big Seaweed Search | Help monitor the effects of environmental change on Britain’s sealife by exploring the seashore and recording the living seaweeds you find there. http://www.nhm.ac.uk/take-part/citizen-science/big-seaweed-search.html | natural sciences, seaweed, reporting | Natural History Museum |
| Bildungsexplosion | A platform for general knowledge concerning the history of the earth and humankind. Everyone can attend and share their knowledge. | collection of information | |
| Citizen Archivist Dashboard | Citizen Archivist Dashboard leads to an ever-changing series of projects developed by the US National Archives and Records Administration, beginning with users transcribing 1940 Census data. Several simultaneous projects are represented: https://www.archives.gov/citizen-archivist | archives, correction, transcription, contextualisation, description, complementing, co-curating | The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration |
| DIY History | DIY History is a project from the University of Iowa that calls upon the public to help transcribe historical documents. It began as a project to help transcribe American Civil War diaries and grew to include every type of historical document, most notably more than 300 years of handwritten cookbooks from the Chef Louis Szathmary Culinary Collection. | correction, transcription, contextualisation, description | University of Iowa |
| Earthworm Watch | Contributing to research into soil health and carbon storage by measuring soil properties and recording earthworms in private gardens or a local green space.
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/take-part/citizen-science/earthworm-watch.html |
natural science, earthworm, reporting | Natural History Museum |
| E-Bird | Launched in 2002 by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and National Audubon Society, eBird provides rich data sources for basic information on bird abundance and distribution at a variety of spatial and temporal scales. The observations of each participant join those of others in an international network of eBird users. eBird then shares these observations with a global community of educators, land managers, ornithologists, and conservation biologists. | observation, natural sciences | Audubon & Cornell Lab of Ornithology |
| Engaging Citizens in Environmental Monitoring | Participate in ongoing projects and join the citizen science movement to help us address global land cover issues. Engage in global environmental monitoring and collaborate with leading scientists. Mapping global forest cover and certification practices. | monitoring, natural science | International Institute for Applied Systems Analytics |
| Family Search | FamilySearch indexing is a volunteer transcription effort that makes valuable genealogical records freely searchable online. Since FamilySearch indexing began in 2006, this unprecedented crowdsourcing effort has produced more than one billion searchable records. Hundreds of thousands of volunteer indexers have participated from around the world. | genealogy, correction, transcription | |
| Genealogisches Postkartenarchtiv | Platform to upload and collect old postcards before 1930 with a particular focus on the names and texts. Citizens can participate by uploading or translating postcards. | collection of information | |
| GlobalXplorer | GlobalXplorer° is an online platform that uses the power of the crowd to analyze the incredible wealth of satellite images currently available to archaeologists.https://www.globalxplorer.org/ |
collaboration | |
| Grabstein Projekt | Volunteers take pictures of old grave stones to create a database for historical research in case the stone gets removed | collection of information | Verein für Computergenealogie |
| Historypin | Projects are run by local volunteers who digitise photos, collect stories and record oral histories, mapping and sharing this content online. | history, photograph, tagging, oral history, story telling | For partners see: hiftdesign.org.uk/products/historypin/#partners |
| Illinois Butterfly Monitoring Network | The Illinois Butterfly Monitoring Network engages citizen scientists in the process of collecting quantitative data on butterfly populations. | natural sciences | The Nature Conservacy |
| Insekten Sachsen | Project is dedicated to the research of native insects. With the ambition to spread and expand knowledge about insects, citizens are invited to share their discoveries and observations. | collection of information | |
| I-Spex | The iSPEX project actively involves citizens in the scientific measurement of air pollution. With the iSPEX add-on you can transform your smartphone into an optical sensor that is suited to measure tiny atmospheric particles, also called aerosols. | collection of information | iSPEX-EU is part of LIGHT2015, a project funded through the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme |
| Miniature Fossils Magnified | Extract research data from microscope slides of some of the world’s smallest fossils.
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/take-part/citizen-science/miniature-fossils-magnified.html |
natural science, fossil, identification, microscope slide | Natural History Museum |
| Mosquito Atlas | The project started in April 2012, since then contributors from all over Germany add bodies of mosquitos (gnats) which they catch, shockfrost and send to the mosquito atlas. | collection of information | Leibniz-Zentrum für Agrarlandschaftsforschung (ZALF) e.V |
| Operation War Diary | Working together to make previously inaccessible information available to academics, researchers and family historians worldwide, leaving a lasting legacy for the centenary of the First World War. | history, military, war diary, transcription | National Archives |
| Plants of Concern | Plants of Concern is a regional rare plant monitoring program designed to assess long-term trends in rare plant species. It is a flexible collaboration of public and non-governmental conservation agencies, landowners and volunteer groups, guided by an advisory group of land managers, scientists and volunteers. | natural sciences | The Nature Conservancy |
| Shakespeare’s World | Shakespeare’s World is a collaboration between the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., Zooniverse.org at Oxford University, and the Oxford English Dictionary of Oxford University Press. In this project we’re inviting you to transcribe manuscripts created by thousands of men and women in and around Shakespeare’s lifetime, 1564–1616. | transcription | Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., Zooniverse.org, Oxford English Dictionary |
| Smithsonian Digital Volunteers: Transcription Center | Smithsonian Digital Volunteers: Transcription Center: The Smithsonian Transcription Center seeks to engage the public in making our collections more accessible. We’re working hand-in-hand with digital volunteers to transcribe historic documents and collection records to facilitate research and excite the learning in everyone. The Transcription Center opened in July 2013 with thousands of documents across 31 projects from eight Smithsonian museums, archives, and libraries. | history, correction, transcription | Smithsonian |
| The Calling Frog Survey | Our goal is to establish calling frog survey routes throughout the Chicago region, resulting in amphibian abundance and distribution data. We particularly want to continue monitoring sites that have thus far been monitored regularly, so that we can obtain long-term data on amphibian trends within key sites. | natural sciences,
collection of information |
Chicago Academy of Sciences |
| Transcribe Bentham | Transcribe Bentham is a crowdsourced manuscript transcription project launched in 2010. It is run by University College London’s Bentham Project, in partnership with UCL’s Centre for Digital Humanities, UCL Library Services, UCL Learning and Media Services, and the University of London Computer Centre. Transcribe Bentham will digitise 12,500 Bentham folios, and, through a wiki-based interface, allow volunteer transcribers to take temporary ownership of manuscript images and to create TEI-encoded transcription text for final approval by UCL experts. | history, manuscript, correction, transcription | University College London |
| UK Whale and Dolphin Strandings | Contribute to our understanding of UK marine mammals by telling us about any stranded whales, dolphins and porpoises you find.
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/take-part/citizen-science/uk-whale-and-dolphin-strandings.html |
natural science, whale, dolphin, stranding report | Natural History Museum |
| War graves (Kriegsgräberliste) | The state archive of Baden-Württemberg put some 13,000 pages of scanned lists online which were transcribed by volontiers. The project cooperated with the Club for Computergenealogiy. The project is finished, all results are available online. | collection of information | Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg |
| Webgenealogie | Platform for geneaologic research. Citizens can upload data of their family history. | collection of information | |
| Wissensdinge | Project of the National History Museum of Berlin in which visitors and interested participants can add personal knowledge and experiences to the objects. By doing so different perspectives on the collection can be revealed. | collection of information | Museum für Naturkunde Berlin |
| Zeean | zeean was set-up to collect and provide data on global supply chains. It is designed as a community effort of mutual benefit: Along the lines with Wikipedia a valid and comprehensive database of economic flows at high regional, sectoral and temporal detail is generated. | collection of information | Potsdam Institut für Klimafolgenforschung |
| Zooniverse | A site linking to citizen science projects – 75 live at the moment. | aggregator | Various partner organisations |
