For my crowdsourced transcription project, I registered for Addressing Health (one way to feel empowered as a non-essential worker during an unprecedented pandemic) and completed transcriptions before the project closed because its present term goals were met. But, when I saw the range of projects connected via the Zooniverse infrastructure, it made me realize that there was quite a range of projects. Some, like the one I participated in, simply required human labor no matter one’s ability level. Others required a sophisticated tutorial in reading microscopic slides with biologic data that might be better suited for undergraduate students with extra time between their science labs (See “Science Scribbler: Placenta Profiles”).

I learned that the quality and quantity of volunteer contributions toward realizing a project likely hinges on two key elements: (1) how well the research goal is presented in a way that connects with volunteer interests, motivations; and (2) how easy it is for the volunteer to just get started and maintain momentum in the volunteer task work.

Addressing Health asked volunteers to read handwritten 19th century British postal office personnel records and to transcribe that information into digital text using a particular format. Initially I was confused about where to actually find the “start” button for the tutorial training and which records to work on, which is probably why I ended up clicking the wrong buttons and learned about other crowdsource volunteer projects available in the Zooniverse such as the “Placenta Profiles” project. Once I got started, I was somewhat amazed at how rote the work was despite the enthusiastically introduced research description on the importance of the project for public health interests and budget considerations in the UK.

After the first three records or so completed, I thought about an article I read in The Atlantic two years ago that drew attention to the concept of micro-outsourcing jobs some companies do that basically mimics sweatshop labor in the digital era. The bigger question to me became: what is the nuance between the types of repetitive tasks only a human can do versus that of a computer or algorithm? Afterall, in transcribing these records I was simply turning a mix of qualitative and quantitative data into a computer-analysis ready data set. When will artificial intelligence reach a step where having a human do what I did might no longer be necessary?

Thus, the set-up of a crowdsourced project really needs to impart a sense of purpose and camaraderie to maintain human motivation. That was nominally achieved by making sure volunteers understood what the work would be used for (important scholarship that would include their name in attribution), there was a way to connect with other volunteers (features embedded to allow volunteers to converse with each other about what they found in the data sets), and something of a progress bar that gave a sense of gamification – reaching an end goal as a team.

Matthew G. Kirschenbaum in his piece “What Is Digital Humanities and What’s It Doing in English Departments” discusses the importance of social networks, which this project tried to create with postings between volunteers, but with this transcription project, I imagine it operates more from one-off volunteer passerbys like myself. If you can get a network to scale with those, you can still achieve a lot of work, but, in thinking of the human dimension, to me that does not make a fully engaged community. Or, as Claire Ross better described it in her work on Social Media for Digital Humanities and Development: “Social media should not focus on the technology, but the activity that is undertaken.”

In undertaking the Addressing Health activity, I felt neither fulfilled in the technology I utilized nor in a sense of contribution or purpose in my work. On the other hand, given the highly local nature of research on 19th century British postal worker pensions and health, maybe if I were located in the UK, perhaps the local culture aspect would make me feel like I was part of something more important to me.

Works Cited:

Alana Semuels, “The Internet is Enabling a New Kind of Poorly Paid Hell” The Atlantic January 23, 2018. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/01/amazon-mechanical-turk/551192/

Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, “What Is Digital Humanities and What’s It Doing in English Departments?” ADE Bulletin, No. 150, 2010.

Ross, Claire. “Social Media for Digital Humanities and Development” In Digital Humanities in Practice Claire Warwick et al., p. 24-25 Facet Publishing, 2012.