Stories to Tell: The making of
Our Digital Nation
Rose Holley – National Library of Australia
rholley@nla.gov.au
The 2010 National Trust Heritage Festival at Mosman Library
22 April 2010
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Changing Information Landscape
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Millions of cultural
heritage items are
now digitised and
accessible online.
In Australia 66% of
population has
internet broadband
access.
(Dec 2009 ABS)
Photo courtesy Genevieve Bell. Location: near Morgan, South Australia
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Pre web, information was
 Produced by a relatively few large and
powerful publishers
 Discovered by metadata hand-crafted by
librarians
 Expensive and centralised
Post web, information is
 Produced by anyone
 Discovered by full text and bottom-up
linking effects
 Cheap and distributed
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Year: 2010
Technology has turned discover on its head:
 Content can be created by anyone
 Content can be described by anyone
Libraries, museums and archives are now
even more relevant in our society and
needed – why?
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How are libraries different
to Google/Amazon/Flickr?
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Long term preservation and access
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Not constrained by commercial pressures
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Universal access
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“Free for all”
ALWAYS and FOREVER….
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‘Web 2.0’
Web 2.0 = Social engagement on the
internet
Interactions with data and other users have
been enabled online e.g.
 Marking, reviewing, rating, tagging,
commenting on items
 User Forums, Blogs, Facebook
 The world of hyper-linking
……Helps individuals to help themselves……
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Next step = Crowdsourcing
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Call on the whole ‘crowd’ to help you
The ‘crowd’ – public volunteers
Working toward a clear goal
Goal is big and for the ‘common good’
Each person does small tasks
Usually using web 2.0 social engagement
strategies
The crowd motivates each other and
communicates online
A virtual community is formed
An amazing thing is achieved
A book to read: Clay Shirky ‘Here comes everybody’.
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For Example
Using our knowledge to write articles to
make a free online encyclopaedia.
Transcribing birth, death and marriage
hand written records so that they become
searchable online.
Recording local history.
Making out of copyright books
electronically available.
Improving the quality of full-text historic
newspapers.
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What does this mean?
For libraries, museums, archives:
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We have rich content and need to give make it
all accessible to the public.
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We have the technology to give the public online
tools to do stuff with it.
“Freedom is actually a bigger game than power.
Power is about what you can control. Freedom is
about what you can unleash.”
Harriet Rubin
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For People:
anyone/everyone can help
Flickr: LucLeqay
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Community has:
1. Enthusiasm
2. Knowledge
3. Time
Create
Transcribe
Describe
Share
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You can help libraries to…..
1. Achieve goals that they would never
have the resource to do themselves by
giving your time.
2. Improve and add value to items and
services by sharing your knowledge.
3. Help take responsibility for the curation
of public cultural heritage items.
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Why help? What’s in it for you?
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I love it
It’s interesting and fun
It is a worthy cause
It’s addictive
I am helping with something important e.g.
recording history, finding new things
I want to do some voluntary work
I want to help non-profit making organisations like
libraries
I want to learn something
It’s a challenge
I want to give something back to the community
You trust me to do it so I’ll do it
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The machine is Us/ing us
"Don't under estimate the power of people who
join together…. they can accomplish amazing
things,"
Barack Obama 19 Jan 2009 Speaking on community engagement and
involvement and voluntary work
You Tube Video The machine is Us/ing us.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g&
feature=channel
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Australian Newspapers
17 million articles now, 40 million by 2011
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Sydney Morning Herald
1831 – 1954 now available online
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Tag, comment, fix up articles
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Easy…..
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Achievements
March 2010 (1.5 yrs since release)
 9,000+ volunteers
 12 million lines of text corrected in
600,000 newspaper articles
 400,000 tags added
 7,600 comments added
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Hall of Fame
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391,378 lines improved
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Picture Australia
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Contribute your photos via flickr
65,000 photos added by 2,500 people
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/8773698@N03/3222233854/
L Plater’s photostream
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Activity is valued by libraries
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Flickr Commons
•State Library of Queensland
•Australian War Memorial
•State Library of New South Wales
•Powerhouse Museum
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Images in public domain, add notes, tags, comments, help
identify and describe
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85 million items from Australian organisations
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Wikipedia
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150,000 active volunteers
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WikiNorthia
Online encyclopaedia for Melbourne’s northern suburbs.
Funded by public libraries, created by the public.
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Wikishepp
Goulburn Library and University of Melbourne, co-ordinating
writing groups for local encyclopedia.
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Distributed Proofreaders
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9 years, 90,000 volunteers, 16,000 e-books
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FamilySearchIndexing
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160,000 volunteers – BDM records internationally
334 million names so far.
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Ryerson index
2 million names transcribed from recent newspapers
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AustraliaGenWeb
Volunteer to Transcribe from hard copy archives or
maintain a State GenWeb hub
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Shipping in Australian waters
Transcribing from microfilm in NSW
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Founders and survivors
New site – April 2010. What can you tell us about convicts?
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Summary
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Enhancing Australian Newspapers
Adding pictures of people, places, events
to Picture Australia/Trove
Adding comments to resources in Trove
Wikipedia articles on local community
Transcribing family indexes/archives on
locality
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How can you help?
 Volunteer to help online
 Publicize projects – spread the word
 Let libraries know what you want to do
with their data and how you could help
 We need an open wiki to list all these sites
that you can volunteer for…put it on
Wikipedia crowdsourcing page..
 Create new projects
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Thank you, and what did I miss?
Thomas Hawk - flickr
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Times are changing….
Medieval helpdesk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQHXSjgQvQ
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