Van crowdsourcing naar echte burgerwetenschap: investeer in de kwaliteit van samenwerking

Abstract

The interdisciplinary research project Chronicling Novelty. New Knowledge in the Netherlands,

1500-1850 examines how new knowledge was disseminated among a wider audience of non-experts

in the early modern Netherlands based on a source corpus of over 200 Dutch-language local

chronicles. Most of this corpus, a total of over 35,000 scans of manuscripts collected from Dutch and Belgian archives, have been transcribed and annotated with the help of volunteers. To take full advantage of the potential time, knowledge and skills of volunteers, a considerable investment is needed on the part of researchers. A survey conducted among our volunteers showed that most of them considered information, instruction, feedback, and appreciation much more important than a material reward. Furthermore, we found that differentiation between volunteers is important. Some people like to perform relatively simple tasks, while others want to be more actively involved and contribute their expertise and ideas. Closer contact with researchers can reveal this enthusiasm as well as the knowledge and experience people have, which can be used. More communication, involvement and ownership of certain tasks is then desirable. Own initiatives and projects could emerge from this. The biggest bottleneck for citizen science is the available time and resources of researchers. Current funding instruments for researchers do not meet this need.