Projects per year
Abstract
The GB1900 project transcribed almost all text on 1:10,650 mapping covering Great Britain, published circa 1900: 2.6 million geo-referenced text strings, so possibly the largest specifically historical gazetteer. Nearly 1,200 volunteers made 5.5 million transcriptions, including “confirmations”. This paper describes the project’s interaction with online volunteers and then presents their experience, as recorded through the online system itself, six in-depth interviews and 162 responses to an online questionnaire. We find that, unlike volunteers in physical science “citizen science” projects, they were motivated by personal interest in the maps, in places that held meaning for them, and in how places had changed. These conclusions enable us to offer suggestions for volunteer recruitment and retention in similar future projects.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 150-163 |
Journal | Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History |
Volume | 52 |
Issue number | 3 |
Early online date | 11 Feb 2019 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 8 Aug 2019 |
Keywords
- crowd-sourcing
- citizen science
- gazetteer
- GB1900
- motivation
Fingerprint
Dive into the research topics of 'Citizen science through old maps: volunteer motivations in the GB1900 gazetteer-building project'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Projects
- 1 Finished
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GB1900 Crowd-Sourced Gazetteer of Britain
Southall, H., Aucott, P. & Stoner, M.
1/09/15 → 10/07/18
Project: Research
Press/Media
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Gazetteer of Britain
Paula Aucott, Humphrey Southall & Michael Stoner
21/09/16 → 27/06/19
10 items of Media coverage
Press/Media: Research cited