Open Data and Crowdsourcing in the Cultural Heritage Domain

Introduction

A large fraction of heritage institutions are part of the public sector and/or are mostly publicly funded: According to a pilot study among heritage institutions of national significance in Switzerland, more than half of them are regulated by public law, while another third are private organizations with a non-profit character.

The emerging collaborative culture on the Internet provides heritage institutions (galleries, libraries, archives, museums) with new opportunities, but creates also new challenges for them. Several pioneer institutions have already managed to harvest the first fruits of the new collaborative culture, embracing innovative crowdsourcing approaches and reaching out to online communities. Many heritage institutions, however, are still in an exploratory phase, trying to find out how they could best adapt to the new circumstances.

Conversely, one of the largest collaborative communities on the Internet, the Wikipedia/ Wikimedia community, is gradually reaching out to heritage institutions, in order to include their content in Wikimedia-related projects and to benefit from their expertise.

These developments take place in the context of several trends among heritage institutions that have taken shape or have been invigorated thanks to the advent of the Internet:

1. Digitization and increased cooperation and coordination among heritage institutions 
2. Increased interactivity, personalization, and engagement of audiences
3. Co-production by users/visitors (crowdsourcing)
4. “free” licensing and open data / open content
5. linked data / semantic web

Problem Statement

Adopting an open data policy or engaging in crowdsourcing practices is not without challenges for heritage institutions, as it is associated with major changes in the way they interact with their surroundings and in the way they conceive of themselves and their role in society. Conversely, online communities, such as the Wikipedia/Wikimedia community, or free culture activists who want to engage in successful co-operations with heritage institutions need to get an understanding of the issues at stake not only from the point of view of the new Internet culture, but also from the perspective of long-standing institutions. And finally, some of the issues at stake, such as the question of how to deal with orphan works or how best to promote the development of a prosperous information society, may call for action by public authorities or legislative bodies.

Research Questions

• Where do heritage institutions stand with regard to open data and crowdsourcing? (comparison between open data and crowdsourcing practices; comparison between different types of heritage institutions; international comparison)
• What are the factors that influence the adoption of open data policies and crowdsourcing practices? How can the innovation diffusion process be accelerated?
• What are the links between open data and crowdsourcing practices?
• How do organizations change in the wake of their adoption of open data and crowdsourcing practices?

Methodological Approach

Both quantitative and qualitative methods are used:

A Baseline Survey is carried out in order to describe the status quo regarding the progress of Open Data and Crowdsourcing among heritage institutions in Switzerland. In a second round, this survey is extended to other countries (cross-sectional analysis, benchmarking) and a follow-up survey among Swiss heritage institutions is carried out 2 to 3 years after the first survey. The main conceptual framework referred to in order to interpret the overall survey results is the innovation diffusion model that has been popularized by Everett M. Rogers (1962, 2003). Other theoretical frameworks may be employed in order to interpret some of the more detailed findings.

Case Study Research (Yin 2008, Eisenhardt 1989) will be used to study emerging practices among innovating cultural institutions and eventually to identify “best practices” that can guide later adopters. Case studies will also be used to identify organizational challenges and to study how institutional frameworks change with the imple¬mentation of a new mode of production and to describe the conflicts that arise through this change.
 

Expected Results

• International benchmarking tool to measure the diffusion of open data and crowdsourcing among heritage institutions
• Improved version of an open data / crowdsourcing readiness assessment instrument for heritage institutions
• Recommendations in view of the promotion of open data and crowdsourcing practices among heritage institutions

This dissertation is beeing written by Beat Estermann under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Reto Steiner.