Engaging the Public: Best Practices for Crowdsourcing Across the Disciplines

FAIN: HC-229771-15

Dartmouth College (Hanover, NH 03755-1808)
Mary D. Flanagan (Project Director: September 2014 to January 2017)
Andrea Wiggins (Co Project Director: December 2014 to January 2017)
Neil R. Fraistat (Co Project Director: December 2014 to January 2017)

A cooperative agreement to organize a two-day workshop that would encourage the cross-disciplinary exchange of ideas and best practices in crowdsourcing across the humanities and sciences, particularly in libraries, archives, and museums.

Engaging the Public: Best Practices for Crowdsourcing Across the Disciplines is a proposed workshop to be held in May 2015, at the University of Maryland, that would build an important intellectual and networking bridge for crowdsourced humanities projects, supported by a Cooperative Agreement among NEH, Dartmouth College, and the University of Maryland, with additional support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the Sloan Foundation. Throughout the workshop, our central concern will be on the question of how institutions might best adopt and employ crowdsourcing strategies for increasing public engagement, integrating data into existing collections, and increasing knowledge in the humanities and related domains. In obtaining support for the workshop from three different funders, with their own distinct communities to bring into the conversation, we will be ensuring a rich cross-disciplinary dialogue, sending a very public signal about the importance of these emerging practices.