Editorial

Pages149-157
Date18 April 2020
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-03-2020-316
Published date18 April 2020
AuthorYuxiang Zhao,Xiao Hu,Kangning Wei
Subject MatterLibrary & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management
Editorial
Crowdsourcing and collaboration in digital humanities
Introduction
What is now called crowdsourcing the involvement of the general public in undertaking
tasks with multiple granularities in the form of an open call has a long history. It is
important to note that the difference between the traditional mass collaboration projects and
the modern phenomenon of crowdsourcing proposed by Howe (2006) is the use of the Internet
and various online computer-mediated communication platforms to distribute tasks among
large numbers of individuals and interest groups (Terras, 2016). To date, many
crowdsourcing projects have been conducted in the business domain, which facilitates the
idea of open innovation and leverage the wisdom of crowds to solve real-world problems
(Zhao and Zhu, 2014).
In recent years, crowdsourcing has also been leveraged in the cultural heritage domain,
such as Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (abbreviated as GLAMs), to improve
the collection, organization and evaluation of valuable resources (Holley, 2010;Oomen and
Aroyo, 2011;Owens, 2013). Crowdsourcing initiatives of GLAMs strive to offer citizens the
opportunity of being deeply involved in the production, utilization, communication,
preservation and curation of digital collections in the cultural heritage domain (Lankes
et al., 2007;Terras, 2016). For example, there have been some attempts to crowdsource
complex tasks traditionally only handled by academics or domain experts to the general
public (Ridge, 2013;Severson and Sauve, 2019;Zhao and Zhu, 2016). Terras (2016) stresses
that many crowdsourcing projects carried out within GLAMs naturally fit under the digital
humanities umbrella, and it is difficult to make a distinction between crowdsourcing in
cultural heritage sectors and the area of digital humanities, as many projects from GLAMs
are leveraging crowdsourcing not only to organize or manage culturalhistorical information
but to provide the methodologies and mediating tools for generating and co-creating novel
information about our past and future. Therefore, in this editorial, we do not distinguish
between cultural heritage and digital humanities when discussing the crowdsourcing
projects in GLAMs.
In addition, some scholars argue that it is problematic to directly use the industry
definition of crowdsourcing to the field of digital humanities (Owens, 2013;Ridge, 2016).
Dunn and Hedges (2013) conceptualize crowdsourcing in the context of humanities research
and identify four distinguishing factors pertaining to the asset type, process type, task type
and output type. Ridge (2013) proposes a new definition of crowdsourcing in the cultural
heritage domain and emphasizes the maintenance of granularities or to exploit the volunteer
labor unethically as in the business field, but to establish a sustainable and effective
interaction through cooperation and collaboration. We agree with Ridges view (2013) that the
concept and definition of crowdsourcing in the digital humanities field deserves further
Editorial
149
The publishers would like to thank Professor Dirk Lewandowski, the Editor-in-Chief of the Aslib Journal
of Information Management, for supporting and facilitating the special issue. The publishers would also
like to express sincere appreciation to all of the reviewers who provided insightful and constructive
review comments to the authors. Last but not least, the publishers are grateful to the authors who
submitted their manuscripts for consideration and revised the papers based on reviewerssuggestions.
Without everyones efforts, the publishers could not complete this special issue. The publishers hope
that the readers will enjoy reading these interesting research articles.
Aslib Journal of Information
Management
Vol. 72 No. 2, 2020
pp. 149-157
© Emerald Publishing Limited
2050-3806
DOI 10.1108/AJIM-03-2020-316

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