Crowdsourcing, or asking the general public to help contribute to shared goals, is increasingly popular in memory institutions as a tool for digitising or computing vast amounts of data. This book brings together for the first time the collected wisdom of international leaders in the theory and practice of crowdsourcing in cultural heritage. It features eight accessible case studies of groundbreaking projects from leading cultural heritage and academic institutions, and four thought-provoking essays that reflect on the wider implications of this engagement for participants and on the institutions themselves. This book will be essential reading for information and cultural management professionals, students and researchers in universities, corporate, public or academic libraries, museums and archives.

Mia Ridge specialises in user experience design for participation and engagement in cultural heritage and the digital humanities, and has advised organisations such as the BBC, Public Catalogue Foundation, The Science Museum Group and the V&A Museum on usability, audience participation and crowdsourcing. Mia has lead workshops teaching design for crowdsourcing in cultural heritage and academia for groups such as the British Library's Digital Scholarship programme and the Digital Humanities 2013 conference. Her research at the Open University focuses on effective design for participatory digital history and the collaborative enhancement of historical materials.

Crowdsourcing Our Cultural Heritage; 1: Case Studies; 1: Crowdsourcing in Brooklyn; 2: Old Weather; 3: 'Many Hands Make Light Work. Many Hands Together Make Merry Work' 1; 4: Build, Analyse and Generalise; 5: What's on the Menu?; 6: What's Welsh for 'Crowdsourcing'? Citizen Science and Community Engagement at the National Library of Wales; 7: Waisda?: Making Videos Findable through Crowdsourced Annotations; 8: Your Paintings Tagger; 2: Challenges and Opportunities of Cultural Heritage Crowdsourcing; 9: Crowding Out the Archivist? Locating Crowdsourcing within the Broader Landscape of Participatory Archives; 10: How the Crowd Can Surprise Us; 11: The Role of Open Authority in a Collaborative Web; 12: Making Crowdsourcing Compatible with the Missions and Values of Cultural Heritage Organisations