Nanna Floor Clausen: Danish experience with crowdsourcing: the Danish Demographic Database

Danish Demographic Databasea crowd sourcing success

Nanna Floor Clausen

Dansk Data Arkiv

Topics

• The Source Entry Project• Organization and co-operation• Sources• Source Entry programmes• Danish Demographic Database• Perspectives of co-operation• Census data and research

Source Entry Project

• Founded in 1992• Background: great interest for transcribing

sources• The demographic sources not analysed in

details• IT introduced new possibilities• Co-operation with citizen researchers

neccessary

Outlines of the co-operation

• SAKI: collaboration on source transcription• KOKI: co-ordination of source transcription• DDA: from 1997 DDA is the sole co-ordinator

and administrator• Close co-operation between DDA and

volunteers (public and private working together)

• Provision of courses in source entry project• KIK: Source Entry Committee

Foundation

• Overview of already transcribed sources

• Control of all information on transcriptions

• Definition of principles for source transcription

• Consistent reference to places• Preservation of the transcribed data

The sources

• Structured sources– Definitions for: censuses, cadastre, military

conscription rolls, church records• Unstructured sources

– probate indexes, land charges register,…

Access to the sources

• Copies of census registers from DDA• Arkivalier Online• Sources in the archives

Source Entry Programmes

• Developed by the volunteers• Based on the defined structures• 4 different programmes over time• Based on off-line transcriptions• Data and documentation sent to DDA

Danish Demograpic Database

• Launched August 1996• Comprised censuses and Copenhagen

police emigration registers– Link to the scanned sources

• Since then several new source types and databases– Like ‘Nygaards sedler’

Example of project managed by volunteers

• A private initiative between a group of volunteers and the National Archives

• The National Archives put the sources at the group’s disposal in return for a copy of the result. The project was managed exclusively by 5 volunteers.

• It was carried out in 2008. Photography of the 420.000 pages was done by 5 volunteers and 35 did the transcribing.

• In 2011 the project was published in the DDD.

Example

Incentives for volunteers

• Free and easy access to the compiled data• Summaries of

– Number of transcriptions– List of citizen researchers (hitlist)– List of proof readers (also a hitlist)– What is reserved / deposited– What is in the database

• Documentation of who did the entry

Incentives by volunteers

• Map of transcribed censuses• Forum for users• Debate and articles

Map of progress

Progress

>20 years with crowd-sourcing

• Presentation on YouTube:

Plans and ideas

• (Re-)Establish link to scanned sources• On-line source entry program (almost

there)• Add more source types (in progress)• New facilities – like record linking• Still more data• Establish source entry groups

Our experience – so far

• A large potential in the general public• The purpose must be clearly defined and

understandable• There must be some (immediate) value in it for the

participant • Strong feelings about the project and the data• Communication between project managers,

participants and users• Problem: who owns the digitised data?? How may

they be (re-)used?

Ich danke für ihre Aufmerksamkeit