Libraries are changing so we’ve pretty much been in the forefront of making community connections and really trying to take library services and programs outside the library walls and to the community.
—Melissa G. Lane, manager of local history and digital preservation, Gail Borden Public Library, Illinois.
Your library is a very special institution. Libraries are perceived as safe places that support the community and are a source of trusted information.1 Libraries are places where values like culture, freedom of information, freedom of access to technology, the importance of literacy, and preservation of the past are shared by many users. Many people in your community believe in the mission of your library and are willing to vote for taxes to support your organization. A 2010 OCLC study found that respondents felt “libraries provide the personnel, technology, information resources and physical environment that meet their needs.”2 Statistical studies before and during the Great Recession (2007−2009) found more people turning to the library for resources and assistance than in non-recession years, and a 2012 report from the IMLS found a 20.7 percent increase in library visits over ten years.3 The library is a place people seek out for reliable resources in good times and bad. As a result there is often a high level of trust and loyalty among library users.
A strong relationship with the community is further solidified when that community is asked for assistance or advice. Reaching out will show your patrons that you value their opinions, stories, and talents. Asking for advice can increase empathy, strengthen bonds with community members, and provides an opportunity to reach traditionally underserved populations.4 One way of encouraging community involvement is through a volunteer program, but this is often limited to a few individuals who are able to regularly work at the library. There are other ways to reach larger numbers of people by asking for content, going to their location, or using technology to make connections between user interests and library needs.
When Emily Meloche of the Chelsea District Library in Michigan needed help identifying individuals within a large collection of photographic negatives, she knew where to look for assistance. A local photographer had retired and given the library boxes and bags of negatives which after processing resulted in forty-eight linear feet of material. Some envelopes had handwritten names with varying degrees of legibility and others had little information regarding the people in the photos. Meloche called the local senior center and asked if any of the residents would assist her with identifying any of the individuals in the photos. Meloche hoped a few of the area seniors might be willing to help identify the events and people, but the response was even greater than expected. When she arrived that first day there were twelve seniors waiting. This regular event has become very popular, generating excitement over the collection while helping the library create accurate metadata to accompany the images. To prepare for the sessions Meloche has the scanned images on PowerPoint slides, numbers the slides and the individuals pictured, and includes any information that came with the images. During the sessions the attendees review the photographs and accompanying information in the projected slides and offer corrections and identifications of individuals. Minor errors are caught early and corrected to improve the accuracy of the metadata.
With this system the seniors are also able to solicit more information from friends or acquaintances who may pore over old yearbooks on their own to identify people in the photographs. If the group cannot name everyone in the image it is common for someone to volunteer to gather more information by seeking out others. Meloche found that participants may say, “Well, I don’t know everyone in this photo, but I’m getting lunch with the groom in this wedding tomorrow, so let me bring him a picture.” In addition to these instances of inspired recruitment of friends beyond the regular meeting time, there are dedicated individuals who wish to include friends unable to attend the meetings. These individuals are provided copies of the images to show to those who aren’t able to come to the senior center. This program of working with the seniors once a month has significantly helped with the creation of metadata for the collection.
Meloche estimates that one third to one half of all individuals in the photographs have been identified. Although this is a good rate, the volunteers have higher standards and are frustrated if the identification rate is less than 100 percent. The seniors of Chelsea are up to the challenge and look forward to the monthly event as an opportunity to socialize and reminisce. The photographs are the focus of conversation and when people in the projected images are recognized, stories are shared about the specific individuals and events. The stories are part of the overall experience, and time and space are taken to allow these narratives and conversations to happen. Although the goal is to collect metadata, the events are very social, a time to share memories and connect with others.
One of the reasons this regular event is so popular is because the volunteers enjoy what they are working on even if they may have started as unwilling participants. One woman who became a regular attendee was first brought, reluctantly, by a friend. She was quiet as others chimed in to identify people, and although she probably did know some of the people in the photos she was not the first to speak. This changed after about twenty minutes when a pre-wedding photo of a woman in her bridal dress lit the screen and she recognized herself. When the slides came to the woman’s wedding pictures Meloche was happy to see “she was able to identify every single person in them.” After this session she was eager to attend the regular event and now volunteers to scan images.
As a result of the popularity of this event, three individuals have also volunteered to help scan the negatives to provide content for the identification session and prevent cancellation due to a lack of images. The volunteers have already shown their dedication and neither rain, sleet, nor hail will keep them from the monthly event. When the meeting was scheduled on a particularly snowy day it was canceled, much to the disappointment of the participants. Meloche was concerned that the seniors “were going to go out there, dig their cars out of the snow and ice to get there to identify photos. I had to say ‘No, stay home, we’ll all stay home today.’” These regular meetings are meaningful to the participants, who enjoy the opportunity to socialize and provide valuable information. The meetings give them a unique volunteer opportunity to share their knowledge, experience, personal memories, and time. Because they enjoy these meetings they are willing to reach out to a larger network of friends and acquaintances.
The Chelsea Public Library is able to have such successful involvement from its community members because they feel their contributions are valued by the library and they are adding to a resource of considerable significance. Their voices are adding to the historic record of the community. Your local senior center or other groups may also be interested in lending their expertise to your projects.
Libraries and librarians often see one of their roles as that of protectors of local history. Their users also recognize this and bring materials to the library to be saved and preserved because libraries are seen as an obvious partner with a shared interest in local culture and history. Carolyn Tremblay, reference librarian at the Dover Public Library in New Hampshire, feels “it’s important to save as much of Dover’s history as possible.” Mona Vance-Ali of Columbus-Lowndes Public Library prefers to keep original materials for long-term preservation. One of the reasons the Flora Public Library wanted Charles Overstreet’s photos was because it felt the materials needed to be preserved, and for Craig Scott in Gadsden the primary reason to digitize is “preservation and the second reason, an important reason, would be public access.” Many of the librarians interviewed felt they needed to collect and preserve local history because the library was the only local institution with both the interest and the means to safeguard and provide access.
Access to material given to the library is a concern of researchers. Alexander Maxwell, senior lecturer at the School of History, Philosophy, Political Science & International Relations at the University of Victoria at Wellington, wrote of digital archives: “I only care about improved access.”5 There is an expectation that these historic materials will be available in the library’s collection, if not online. But what happens to that perception of that history if something is missing?
Some libraries such as the New York Public Library have reputations for serving a diverse population with equally diverse collections with over 100 years’ worth of non-English newspapers and documents. Not all libraries have had the funds, space, expertise, or support to collect materials in multiple languages or from all of a community’s populations. As you look at your collections with an eye towards digitization, ask yourself: does your collection accurately reflect your community?
The history of your collection, the outreach efforts of the past, and the way your library has been perceived by the community can all have a significant impact on the materials obtained through donations or solicitations. Taking a good look at the history of your library and location may reveal some omissions. Many librarians currently embrace a philosophy of inclusion, where the library is open to anyone who seeks to use the books, computers, the space, or who needs information. This was not always historically true of every library or the policies dictated by the values of the community. Some libraries have always been open to all while others were open to a select group of patrons.
This has even been true of the American Library Association. In 1936 when the ALA held its annual conference in Richmond, Virginia, members were upset that the events were segregated, with African American librarians unable to eat in the same room or stay in the same hotel. Members were told that this was to conform to Virginian laws. LeRoy Charles Merritt wrote to Library Journal that “under no circumstances should the A.L.A. allow Negro discrimination to occur at any library conference.”6 His thoughts were similar to others who wrote that the conference should never have taken place under such conditions.
The American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights states: “A person’s right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background, or views.” The first Library Bill of Rights was written in 1939 and was influenced by censorship and the spread of fascism in Europe. Full of good intentions, the statement supported librarians but was useless against Jim Crow laws and segregation. Even if a librarian believed in equality, the desires of the empowered segment of the community could make sure the library was a place of exclusion by firing librarians and replacing them with someone who would uphold the current societal norms. This was the case in 1950 when Ruth Brown was dismissed from the Bartlesville Public Library in Oklahoma for fighting to integrate the library. Many libraries, especially in the South, excluded non-white populations while others had underfunded branch libraries for African American communities.7 There were, however, many exceptions. By 1953 “59 Southern cities and counties permitted ‘full use’ of the main public library to African Americans.” After the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 more libraries desegregated. In 1966 the U.S. Supreme Court, in a case where a group of African American were arrested for peacefully protesting the segregation of the public library, ruled that the “regulation of libraries and other public facilities must be reasonable and nondiscriminatory and may not be used as a pretext for punishing those who exercise their constitutional rights.”8
Given the historic situation, it is not surprising that in some places people who felt excluded may not have trusted the library to hold their family records and documents even when efforts were made in the past to cultivate a more inclusive public space and collection. This results in historic collections that document a predominantly white history and present a one-sided historical perspective. This is an issue that is larger than just library collections. One example of how this can affect the perception of a community is described by Martha Menchaca, who found that in the community of Santa Paula in California the story of the non-Anglo founders and residence was absent from the library archives, the city museum, and government plaques. The omission of these individuals from the local history
produces a distorted history. . . . Indeed, these historical gaps are a problem, as the contributions and accomplishments of Mexican origin people and Native Americans are attributed to Anglo Americans. Furthermore, by not including within Santa Paula’s historical records accounts of the marginalization and discrimination suffered by Mexican origin people, those who chronicled Santa Paula’s past relegated such happenings to insignificance.9
How do you reach out to a community that is underrepresented in the library’s holdings? If members of a community have been discriminated against in the past or present, they may be hesitant to share their personal treasures with a local library. When local history librarian Bill Bell of the Banning Library District in southern California received training as part of his LSTA grant from California, it included analyzing collection materials through the lens of representation. He realized “we had like zero from our black community in Banning, very, very few of the Mexican-American community, none of the Hmong community which has been a large population.” The collection of photographs from the Native American community was also limited. Despite the fact that the community was and is diverse “99 percent of the photos were of white people so that was a problem.” Recognizing the gap in the collection, Bell actively sought to add materials to the collection from these groups.
When you ask your community to share their personal photos and documents you are telling the community that you value their experience and history. You are saying that their history is important to you and worthy of preservation. Asking to share their materials as opposed to donation is important because you are not asking them to give up material with personal significance. Before digitization this required individuals to trust the library to keep and preserve their materials while the individual lost easy access to what could be very personal photos, letters, and scrapbooks. This could limit what people were willing to share and result in collection gaps such as the ones the Banning District Library in California wanted to eliminate.
Banning is a community between two mountain ranges, with the San Gorgonio Mountains to the north and the San Jacinto Mountains south of the city, which is about 40 miles west of Palm Springs. The area was explored in 1855 as a possible route for the railroad to the Pacific reaching the then small port towns of Los Angeles and San Diego. A stagecoach line once passed through the arid area filled with groves of nut trees and native desert palms. The land had been claimed by the Spanish as part of the vast Mission San Gabriel Archangel lands and later as part of Rancho San Jacinto y San Gorgonio.10 The area was already home to the Cahuilla tribe, who had lived in the area for hundreds of years.
The train did go through the pass bringing ranchers, homesteaders, outlaws, and others who would encroach on the Cahuilla lands. Later the dry, clean air and Mediterranean climate would draw people to sanitariums to treat tuberculosis. In the 1940s the first African Americans joined the community, which grew when land acquisitions by the city of Palm Springs in the late 1950s led to evictions and razed homes there. Many of the displaced people moved to Banning.11
The library was first established in 1916 and shared the same building as the school. In 1955 the library moved to a separate structure, but the administration of the library remained under the Banning Unified School District until 2005, when a bill passed by the Californian legislature granted a separate board for the library.12 Banning now has a population of over 29,000 that includes Native American, African American, Hispanic, and Hmong residents, among other peoples.
If Banning had such a long history of cultural diversity, why was this not represented in the library’s collections? When the Banning Public Library was established in 1916 it was closely associated with the school, and it is impossible to tell if librarians in the past felt archival materials were appropriate acquisitions for the collection or if Banning residents felt the library was the place to house their personal history. What really mattered now was that the current librarian was looking at the collection and finding that important segments of the community were not represented.
Rather than rely on the library’s existing photo collection, Bell reached out to the community through a series of newspaper articles requesting people bring their photos and their stories to the library. They did, doubling the library’s collection, but this was not easily done. Bell was frustrated with his initial efforts and wondered “Why aren’t people sharing photos?” only to learn “a lot of it is because they didn’t have them.” Why did so many people in the community not have photographs? In a world of digital photography it is easy to forget that cameras were once less common and more costly.
Photography was once an expensive hobby. It wasn’t until 1900 that Kodak introduced a camera that would change photography; the Brownie, a simple box camera introduced that year and advertised as costing one dollar. Loaded with film instead of glass plates, small and easy to use, the camera was highly popular. In 1905 the U.S. Census estimated the total population of the United States to be 83,822,000, and it is estimated that ten million Americans were amateur photographers.13 Those who did have their picture taken before the popularization of the camera may have waited for special occasions such as weddings, family reunions, or other events. In later decades, when more people had access to cameras and collections of family photos, they may have not considered that their library would want or care for those materials.
The process of conducting outreach and acquiring additional photographs from underrepresented groups was a learning experience for Bell. Some people were hesitant to share these documents at all. His newspaper articles often requested more information from the community and illustrated that the library wanted to tell the story of the whole community. When people did bring their photos a scanner was used to digitize the original images, which were returned to their owners. As people viewed the images in the California Digital Archive and read the stories in the paper requesting information from the public, they were willing to bring their own photographs to the library to have them digitized and added to the collection. Perhaps even more importantly, those individuals who came to the library with images also came with stories which have been incorporated into the local history articles available on the library’s website. Of the project Bell says there are always more materials, especially photographs, which then perpetuate the process when people see those images and recognize the library’s interest.
The ability to digitize an item and return the original is a significant tool for adding to the library’s collection. Bell has found this to be helpful “because you wouldn’t want to give your family photos to an archive but, if you give them for a few months and they scan them and give them back that’s a big plus.” In working with members of the community Bell was also able to learn more about culturally sensitive issues. He had opportunities to learn some of the reasons behind the collection’s lack of material relating to Native Americans. He found that for specific cultural reasons members of the local Native American community did not want to share their photographs with the library.
The Banning District Library has almost 400 images included in the Online Archive of California. Among photos of sweeping vistas, drying dates, and Chamber of Commerce brochures are images of students at the Indian School, Hmong children’s choirs, early businesses and their owners, and diverse family photos. This collection shows the many faces of Banning and recognizes the contributions of these individuals.
Reaching out to the whole community provides opportunities for the library to develop more inclusive collections and document fascinating local history. For Bell this is just the beginning of a collection that will more accurately reflect the people of Banning and fill in gaps on the contributions of the Hmong, African American, and Mexican American communities. Bell feels the library’s outreach efforts have “really opened some eyes to the town, really expressing who the town is or who the people are in the town, whereas prior to this I think a lot of these histories weren’t acknowledged.” By encouraging sharing instead of donation and actively working to tell the stories of the whole community, the library’s collection is becoming more representative of the people who have called Banning home.
Reaching out to different communities can help you build a more representative collection. If you seek to include materials relating to Native Americans, there are protocols developed to facilitate these efforts. These have primarily been created for institutions that have cultural artifacts, but the advice could also be used for those seeking to present an honest representation of the community. One of the recommendations is to contact tribal officials and start a conversation. There is one content management system, Mukurtu, developed to provide flexibility for cultural materials. According to developer Kimberly Christian with the Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation and Washington State University, this system “makes it possible for indigenous communities themselves to manage those materials in ways that are culturally appropriate, and we are putting indigenous knowledge on the same level as that of the collecting institutions.”14 This system can provided different levels of access depending on the user and allows for more control over who can see specific collections. Mukurtu works with and is supported by the Sustainable Heritage Network, which provides workshops and tutorials focused on preserving cultural heritage.
Even large libraries may have collections in need of diversity. The Los Angeles Public Library has a collection titled Shades of LA which focuses on oral histories and photographs from members of the community which reflect the ethnic diversity of the city. The collection was created when the librarians realized how little they had regarding the Watts neighborhood. The issue came to the attention of the library when researchers looking for images to mark the 25th anniversary of the 1965 riots in Watts found that the only image of the area in the library’s collection was of the Pacific Electric railway station. As the library explored the issue it realized that it “owned few photographs from any of the ethnic communities that populated the city.”15 In a city as diverse as Los Angeles this omission of material was a significant issue.
Understanding the challenge of reaching a large and diverse public, the library sought help from organizations within the different communities. With the help of the Photo Friends of the L.A. Public Library, and historian and folklorist Amy Kitchener, the library shared its goal with these groups that then advocated for the project. The project was embraced by around 500 volunteers, including student interns from nearby colleges and universities. Over five years these volunteers worked with over 500 Los Angeles residents who shared their photographs.16 To facilitate this level of interaction with the community there had to be procedures and training for the volunteers who would be working with the public.
Volunteers and staff used a guide which detailed how interactions would proceed and many of these were intended to show that the people and their materials were appreciated. Since the program was potentially looking at huge numbers of photographs, only a few could be selected from each individual. The guide included recommendations for the community members on the care of their old photo albums and suggestions for creating new books of memories. These include proper storage and identifying individuals in the images. This advice not only helps community members by giving good advice but also shows that the library cares about these materials even if they were not selected for inclusion in Shades of LA. Details for libraries on how to organize a photo day event range from fund-raising, the number of volunteers needed, equipment required, to refreshments and is intended to take a library through the whole process. The training guide reminds volunteers to use gloves to prevent fingerprints and to show the donors “we care about their photos and they will not be damaged.”17 The purpose of the project was to add to the library’s collections, create a collection that accurately portrays the community, and help the community preserve its history.
The Los Angeles Public Library succeeded in collecting over two million photos through this initiative; these photos fill many of the previously discovered gaps in the collection and gives a more complete view of the history of the community.
Crowdsourcing is a way to engage a community of interested individuals regardless of location. When used by cultural institutions it is similar to other efforts in which a library may already be engaging. The primary differences are in the reliance on technology to reach the community and the ability to have large numbers of volunteers. The possibilities for crowdsourcing in the United States are being explored by agencies like NASA and the Smithsonian Institute.
The term crowdsourcing can be applied to a number of activities but generally refers to an Internet-based collaborative opportunity.18 Often there is an open call for people to contribute their personal knowledge or skills to the completion of a project. This can range from a call to the community to contribute photos of an event, create transcripts of letters, or add metadata to a document.
So why aren’t more libraries taking advantage of this option? An important element of crowdsourcing is creating “a framework for participation” and this framework requires work, people who can manage the system, and funds to purchase software.19 Software can range from free, open-source options to proprietary services costing several thousand dollars a year. With either option there will need to be some management of the system. The framework for participation can be a newspaper database where users register to correct OCR transcripts or a section for comments included in the metadata display. The results of this solicited work still need to be checked for accuracy.
In making these options available a user can be part of a large project with minimal effort. By announcing an open call for participants you are inviting users to interact with collections, improve searchability, add metadata, and contribute content. An easy-to-use access point enables users to contribute at their own comfort level.
Crowdsourcing does require software and management, but depending on your needs this could be minimal. Brian Geiger, director of the Center for Bibliographical Studies and Research (CBSR) at the University of California, Riverside, started a project to correct text in digitized newspapers. The software they used was originally created for the Australian Newspaper Digitization program. The CBSR was already using the vendor Veridian to host its newspaper collection, and for a modest increase in billing the library was able to add the OCR correction element.
Because this system is handled by a vendor the amount of additional work by the library is minimal, and Geiger estimates the amount of his time he spends on managing the system to be around 2 percent. Users have corrected about four million lines of text and the efforts are occasionally monitored for quality. Geiger has found the process to be surprisingly easy. An important aspect of the program has been the people who are taking time to correct the text and their level of accuracy. The OCR character accuracy for California Digital Newspaper Collection newspapers ranged from 70.4 to 92.6 percent. The corrected papers’ accuracy ranged from 99.3 to 100 percent, with the greatest increase in a single paper (Sausalito News) changing from 70.4 to 100 percent word accuracy.20 If the library had paid for this service, Zarndt and Gieger estimate the cost to be around $0.50 per 1,000 words or $11,560 for CDNC alone.21 To hire someone to do the work would cost around $24,083.22
Generally yes, you can trust the crowd. A number of studies have found that the efforts of diverse groups can have very accurate results. A number of large institutions including NASA and the Smithsonian Institute have trusted the masses with improving their digital content by inviting the public to assist with metadata. The National Library in Finland created a game to correct OCR scans of antique books, newspapers, magazines and journals. The project was highly popular with 55,000 individuals contributing with a 99 percent accuracy rate.23 These institutions have found that the work produced is worth the effort and have found interesting ways to encourage participation.
Why do people spend their time helping libraries with crowdsourcing projects? Those who participate in these projects are people from your community and around the world who share common interests and enjoy sharing their knowledge. A study by Oded Nov found the majority of individuals in his survey of regular Wikipedia contributors were motivated by enjoyment of the work and the ideology behind the site.24 Another study surveyed Wikipedia users at New York University and learned their motivations included educating others, a sense they were making a difference, and to give back to the Wikipedia community.25 People often work on these projects to make their own research easier and to aid those with similar interests.
When the Library of Congress tried a pilot project where Flickr users could tag photos they learned how people were relating to the images through humor, emotion, and contributions of personal knowledge. A report on the project found that the library “appear(s) to have tapped into the Web community’s altruistic substratum by asking people for help.”26 Of the 4,500 images placed online there were fewer than twenty-five comments which were humorous or inappropriate. Overall people liked being asked to contribute and took the responsibility of adding information seriously. The metadata added was primarily on locations, individuals, and sometimes links to articles and other resources.
The Cambridge Public Library in Massachusetts and the CDNC jointly surveyed the people who were assisting with a transcription project to learn more about the people who were taking the time to fix the pages of text. They found that most of the users considered themselves to be genealogists or family historians (67 percent CDNC, 76.6 percent Cambridge), the majority of user were between the ages of 50 and 70, and most transcribers were using the resources for family and local history research.27 One user wrote that the information in the database matched with his personal interests in maritime history and that he was motivated to correct transcripts to make his own research easier and “to leave the corrected text for use of others.”28
This altruistic perspective was a common theme among the transcribers who listed their motivation as a desire to aid others who are engaged in research. In 1998 Janine Nahapiet and Sumantra Ghoshal argued that “in order to contribute knowledge, individuals must think that their contribution to others will be worth the effort and that some new value will be created, with expectations of receiving some of that value for themselves.”29 Individuals who are correcting text may see not only their contribution as an effort to improve the searchability for others, but also themselves.
You look into the night’s sky and you need to identify possible locations of planets. Far beyond the recognized constellations are planetary nurseries that can be detected by infrared wavelengths. These have been captured in thousands of images taken by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. How do you document all the possible needles in a haystack encompassing the cosmos? In a groundbreaking project, NASA invited the public, citizen scientists, to aid in this effort by personally checking the images for signs of debris disks and young stellar objects.
The Smithsonian Digital Volunteers Transcription Center has also sought public assistance in creating transcripts of journals, typed manuscripts and books, money, as well as labels from specimens of bumblebees. Their volunteers range from school children to experts, all of whom are contributing to the increased online availability of these materials. The New York Public Library has used crowdsourcing to provide full-text access to a collection of menus and to create a tool aligning historic maps to modern New York streets allowing users to see changes in the urban landscape.30 There are some volunteers who have made significant contributions including “one user [who], for instance, single-handedly georectified nearly an entire Brooklyn street atlas, well over 200 sheets.”31
Crowdsourcing has many potential benefits such as augmenting the number of workers on a project, reducing the amount of time needed for project completion, building online communities, engaging users to better understand their interests, building trust, and strengthening the connection with the community.
For the Cambridge Public Library in Massachusetts crowdsourcing is transforming OCR errors in newspapers from an unintelligible jumble to a searchable text. Users are invited to register by filling out a simple form. Once this is complete the user can select articles to correct. As large amounts of newspaper text is corrected the people who perform the task are closely interacting with historic documents and connecting with local history.
The Cambridge Public Library’s Historic Cambridge Newspaper Collection contains over 59,000 pages of historic newspapers, 40,000 subject cards, and 13,000 obituary cards. The transcription correction program, Veridian, divides the text into lines that can then be fixed.32 The project has over 170 users who have corrected more than 230,000 lines of text. The project started in 2012 and the accuracy of the transcribers has made a significant impact on the searchability of the newspapers.
In 2014 the Cambridge Library performed a study on newspaper use in the library. They found that library patrons were using both the print and digital versions of the newspapers. Use of the Historic Cambridge Newspaper Collection (HCNC) was far greater than other digital newspaper collections, including the library’s subscription to the Historic New York Times database. The HCNC collection had 11,209 sessions with 40,359 page views between April 1 and May 15, 2014. In the same time period the New York Times database had 803 sessions and 2,393 page views, and the Boston Globe had 1,161 sessions and 1,197 page views.33 This high usage may be attributed to the Cambridge collection being the only free, searchable source for these public domain materials. According to a survey of the library’s patrons, microfilm is still used when a digital version is not available. The Cambridge Chronicle years available online are 1846−1922 (public domain) and 2005 to the present through Newsbank, which library card holders can access from home. This leaves eighty-three years’ worth of newspapers available only in microfilm. Even though it is not the most popular format “patrons continue to use it steadily and even slightly more than the online Cambridge Chronicle provided by NewsBank” and “print newspaper use has remained steady over the past 10 years, although patrons are accessing digital editions more and more.”34
For the Cambridge Public Library crowdsourcing has provided an important service by improving the searchability of its newspaper collection. The library has been able to improve the database without paying large amounts to contract the work. Crowdsourcing has also changed the way people interact with documents and has encouraged use of the microfilm collection.
Inviting the public to assist in this type of project can make good financial sense, but it also serves another purpose. Crowdsourcing provides users with a chance to contribute to common resources while working very closely with the source material. In an interview Nicole Snyder, head of digital library services at the University of Iowa Libraries, stated: “The transcriptionists actually follow the story told in these manuscripts and often become invested in the story or motivated by the thought of furthering research by making these written texts accessible.”35 One transcriber has become so invested in the lives of people mentioned in diaries that he feels they have “become almost an extended part of his family” and mourns their deaths.36 When turning to the crowd for help you are also providing an opportunity for users to dig into a subject, whether it is a handwritten diary, newspaper articles, or local photographs.
CASE STUDY
COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT
The Allen County Public library opened in 1895 with a collection of 3,606 books. Originally called the Fort Wayne Public Library, it has grown significantly and currently serves over 355,000 residents. The library has an annual operating budget of approximately $25 million and circulation of over ten million items each year. There are 13 branch libraries and the entire library system employs 237 full-time staff, 154 part-time staff, and a small army of volunteers. Studios for public television broadcasting, an art gallery, and a genealogical center are all part of the main library building, which is a 367,000-square-foot modern structure filled with public art, large windows, and a futuristic blue reading tower in the children’s area. This very modern library building embraces the future while preserving important historical collections within.
The Allen County Public Library has worked to engage the community by being the main repository of local historic material, utilizing well-organized volunteers, inviting the public to take part in events to document current events, and increasing access to materials through digitization. As a result users are interacting with library materials as contributors, content creators, and information specialists. These efforts started with the digitization of an important collection of photographs and clippings stored in vertical files, a perfect candidate for an online collection.
The original method of storing these images involved gluing the photos onto cardstock. These pieces of cardstock were acidic and were slowly damaging the images, as was the glue used to attach the photos. These two storage aspects were contributing to the deterioration of the images that were stored in filing cabinets. Those cabinets contained roughly 8,000 images in need of preservation. During this time schools were still sending students for local research projects, making photocopies, and historians and genealogists were pulling files and using the materials as they had in the past. The collection was highly used, and the wear and tear on the materials already compromised by the acidic folders and paper meant a solution would need to be found. A decision was made to digitize the material.
To find volunteers the library reached out to members of the local genealogical society who already were heavy users of the library collection. This allowed the library to pull from a pool of volunteers who were truly interested in the collection and had a strong understanding of how the work they were engaged in would support others who were interested in local and family history. The support of the genealogical society provided workers, some funding, and an appreciative audience for the library’s digital collections.
Providing an example of the type of work managed by the library, the presentation and usability of the materials has also encouraged the creation of other projects. When local schools saw the materials the library was making available, it triggered conversations on how the schools could work with the library to digitize school newspapers. One of the oldest schools, South Side High School, had materials dating to the 1920s while some of the newer schools’ collections started in the 1970s.
For Curt Witcher of the Allen County Public Library, “what is exciting to me is community engagement.” For Allen County part of that engagement is a photography contest titled “A Day in Allen County.” In 2014 the Allen County community was encouraged to take a photograph on the last day of summer. The library used its network of contacts to reach schools, art teachers, and the local universities (Indiana University and Purdue University satellite campus) to encourage students to participate. Not only does this provide students with a venue for their work, but it shows a young generation that the library, as an institution, values their work and builds on the relationship with these young library users.
One collection which is part of the modern documentation of life in the Fort Wayne area is based on the photographs the library solicited after the devastating storms in 2012. Within the photographs collected are telephone poles broken like twigs and cars flipped and scattered like children’s toys illustrating the violence of the storm. The images document the local damage from the point of view of those who lived through the events. Witcher says the library provides individuals with “outlets to experience something, share something.” In 2012 a windstorm struck the flooded area and many people lost electricity for weeks. The library asked for people to share images of the damage in their neighborhoods. The result was hundreds of images documenting the destruction.
Another annual event is a poetry contest where, according to Witcher, “there are middle schoolers that just absolutely get geeked about our poetry contest every fall.” The Friends of the Library provides trophies for those who participate, the library prints volumes of the poems that are available to participants, and a copy is cataloged. Every author is listed in the contents field of the catalog record. This leads to excitement and pride among the children who are excited to search for their names in the library catalog. Copies of the books from 2008, 2012, and 2013 are available online through the Internet Archive. Each volume contains winners from different grade levels K−12, and participants come from different area schools.
The Allen County Public Library jumped into the digitization world early, and although it may have been helpful to have had more examples and resources to draw from, the most unexpected issue to arise was not related to technology, workflows, or training, but the flood of interest and materials from the community. Witcher wished that “I would have known that our biggest challenge would be drinking from a fire hose, because we have so much that the community would like us to do.” This inundation of material has required the library to prioritize what is scanned. There is plenty of material that can be added solely from the library’s historical collection, but other materials are part of collaborative agreements, like the school newspapers, have short deadlines such as the church records which had to be returned, or are of great interest such as the World War I letters. These materials have been determined to be high priority. A collection of firefighting photos was of considerable interest and had a dedicated volunteer who was willing to do the work. Another collection from the General Electric plant has also been added. The plant employed close to 30,000 people during the World War II and Korean War efforts making many electrical devices for the army. The plant also had a building full of records that were to be moved to Tennessee or New York. Of all the challenges a library could possibly face, having a reputation for digitizing and being sought out for more projects is one the library is happy to have. Because of the library’s successful outreach efforts it is often the first place people turn to when they find historic documents.
The Allen County Public Library has sought out different segments of the community from local historians to school children. They have created collections based on Lincoln, war letters, and current events. They have used traditional outreach methods such as providing educational events at the library, and the result is a strong reputation and a collection that has led to individuals from across the country contacting the library “without worrying about how do I get the interlibrary loan or how do I get to Fort Wayne.” For Witcher “that is the most exciting part in that particular collection, we’ve really just been on a blazing trail to see how much we can forward face quickly. To me that makes my day, my week, and my month.”
Chapter Synopsis
Outreach is an important tool for gathering materials, metadata, and goodwill from your community. Community involvement is a way to encourage the mission and values of the library and shows that your library believes in protecting local history. Additionally, when the library actively works to involve the community in a project, it reinforces the relationship with the community and provides individuals with a personal connection to the collection.
▪ Inviting members to share their personal collections, stories, and knowledge shows the library cares about both the history and the individuals in the community.
▪ Community efforts can increase the community’s valuation of the material and imbue a sense of ownership.
▪ Your community can assist in providing metadata, saving staff time.
Accurate reflection of the community:
▪ Check your collections for any gaps regarding time periods or representation of the community.
▪ Gaps can be filled through outreach efforts.
▪ People will value an institution that is perceived to value them.
Crowdsourcing:
▪ Has been found to be highly accurate.
▪ People are willing to work on crowdsourced projects to help themselves and others.
▪ Is particularly useful for gathering metadata and correcting OCR transcripts and has been successfully used to improve the searchability of newspapers.
NOTES
1. Tami Oliphant, “I’m a Library Hugger!: Public Libraries as Valued Community Assets,” Public Library Quarterly 33, no. 4 (2014): 348−61, doi: 10.1080/01616846.2014.970431.
2. Cathy De Rosa et al., Perceptions of Libraries: Context and Community (Dublin, OH: Online Computer Library Center, 2011), 42, www.oclc.org/content/dam/oclc/reports/2010perceptions/2010perceptions_all_singlepage.pdf.
3. Denise Davis, “Research Statistics on Libraries and Librarianship in 2006,” Bowker Annual Library and Book Trade Almanac, 2007; Public Libraries in the United States Survey: Fiscal Year 2012 (Washington, DC: Institute of Museum and Library Services, 2012), www.imls.gov/assets/1/AssetManager/Fast_Facts_PLS_FY2012.pdf.
4. Wendy Liu and David Gal, “Bringing Us Together or Driving Us Apart: The Effect of Soliciting Consumer Input on Consumers’ Propensity to Transact with an Organization,” Journal of Consumer Research 38, no. 2 (2011): 242−59.
5. Alexander Maxwell, “Digital Archives and History Research: Feedback from an End? User,” Library Review 59, no. 1 (2010): 24-39.
6. LeRoy Charles Merritt, “Readers Open Forum,” Library Journal, June 15 (1936): 467.
7. Louise S. Robbins, The Dismissal of Miss Ruth Brown: Civil Rights, Censorship, and the American Library (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000); David Battles, The History of Public Library Access for African Americans in the South, or Leaving Behind the Plow, (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2009).
8. Brown v. Louisiana, 383 U.S. 131 (1966), http://laws.findlaw.com/us/383/131.html.
9. Martha Menchaca, The Mexican Outsiders: A Community History of Marginalization and Discrimination in California (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995).
10. J. G. Parke, “Lieutenant Parke’s Route—San Gorgonio Pass,” Reports of Explorations and Surveys, to Ascertain the Most Practicable and Economical Route for a Railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, United States War Dept. 5 (1855−60), 36.
11. Bill Bell, The Black Pioneers of the San Gorgonio Pass, Part 1: A Look at the History of the Black Community in Banning from the 1940s to 1965 (Banning, CA: Banning Library), www.banninglibrarydistrict.org/banning/documents/the%20black%20pioneers,%20part%201.pdf.
12. Stacia Glenn, “Senate Bill Would Permit Banning School, Library Districts to Separate,” The Sun, April 20, 2005, http://infoweb.newsbank.com/resources/doc/nb/news/109998A56DB5C5F2?p=AWNB.
13. Marc Olivier, “George Eastman’s Modern Stone-Age Family: Snapshot Photography and the Brownie,” Technology and Culture 48, no. 1 (2007): 1.
14. “Digital Archiving Tool to Give Indigenous Communities a Voice,” States News Service, (April 20, 2010).
15. Kathy Kobayashi and Carolyn Kozo Cole, “Ethnic Los Angeles Through Family Albums,” Chronicle of Higher Education 43, no. 17 (1996): B9.
16. “Project Summary,” Shades of LA grant documentation provided by Christina Rice, senior librarian, Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection.
17. Ibid.
18. Enrique Estelles-Arolas and Fernando Gonzalez-Ladron-de-Guevara, “Towards an Integrated Crowdsourcing Definition,” Journal of Information Science 38, no. 2 (2012): 189−200.
19. David Gauntlett, Making Is Connecting: The Social Meaning of Creativity, From DIY and Knitting to YouTube and Web 2.0 (Malden, MA: Polity, 2011).
20. Brian Geiger and Frederick Zarndt, “What Motivates Library Crowdsourcing Volunteers?,” American Library Association Conference Presentation (June 30, 2013): 72, www.slideshare.net/cowboyMontana/what-motivates-library-crowdsourcing-volunteers-20130630-ala-lita.
21. Frederick Zarndt, Brian Geiger, Alyssa Pacy, and Stefan Boddie, Crowdsourcing the World’s Cultural Heritage: Part II (Singapore: IFLA World Library and Information Congress, 2013), 16, www.ifla.org/files/assets/newspapers/Singapore_2013_papers/day_2_06_2013_ifla_satellite_zarndt_et_al_crowdsourcing_the_worlds_cultural_heritage-_part_ii.pdf.
22. Geiger and Zarndt, “What Motivates Library Crowdsourcing Volunteers?” 85.
23. William Eggers, “Crowd-Sourcing Social Problems,” Reason 45, no. 8 (January 2014): 44−50.
24. Oded Nov, “What Motivates Wikipedians?” Communications of the ACM 50, no. 11 (November 2007): 60-64, doi: 10.1145/1297797.1297798, http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1297797.1297798.
25. Stacey Kuznetsov, “Motivations of Contributors to Wikipedia,” ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society 36, no. 2 (June 2006).
26. Michekke Springer et al., “For the Common Good: The Library of Congress Flickr Pilot Project” (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, October 30, 2008), 15, www.loc.gov/rr/print/flickr_report_final.pdf.
27. Geiger and Zarndt. “What Motivates Library Crowdsourcing Volunteers?” 46−49.
28. Ibid., 55.
29. J. Nahapiet and S. Ghoshal, “Social Capital, Intellectual Capital, and the Organizational Advantage,” Academy of Management Review 23, no. 2 (1998): 242−66.
30. Ben Verhbow, “NYPD Labs: Hacking the Library,” Journal of Library Administration 53, no. 1 (January 2015): 79−96, doi: 10.1080/01930826.2013.756701.
31. Ibid.
32. “Help,” Cambridge Public Library website, http://cambridge.dlconsulting.com/cgi-bin/cambridge?a=p&p=help&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN------#all.
33. Alyssa Pacy, Newspapers in the Digital Age: A Case Study in How Public Library Patrons Read the News (Lyon, France: IFLA World Library and Information Conference, 2014), 11, www.ifla.org/files/assets/newspapers/Geneva_2014/s6-pacy-en.pdf.
34. Ibid., 14-15.
35. Bill LeFurgy, “Crowdsourcing the Civil War: Insights Interview with Nicole Saylor,” The Signal blog (December 6, 2011), http://blogs.loc.gov/digitalpreservation/2011/12/crowdsourcing-the-civil-war-insights-interview-with-nicole-saylor/.
36. Ibid.