If, like me, you have a bit of a fascination with Museum
Collections then there is rarely anything that quite satisfies the need to pick
up and touch the objects! I’m currently on a journey to what I hope will lead
me to becoming a curator, but until that point there isn’t much that will allow
me to get that same experience. Looking at exhibitions from behind glass just
won’t cut it!
However, while working at the Natural History Museum I was
introduced to a little technique some Museums are using at the moment called crowd-sourcing. This involves using
other websites to allow the general public to transcribe collections online. If
you google this (or something along these lines) you will come up with quite a
few, but the one I have been looking at is the Zooniverse website:
Originally, it was to do with astronomy, but now there are
several history-based projects that are just perfect for history lovers like
us!
The NHM’s project has now largely been done; it was called
‘Notes from Nature’.
But the ones I’m more focussed on are the war diaries and
discovering the lives of ancient greeks. (Hint: it’s halfway down the page
under the ‘humanities’ section). The projects involve transcribing/identifying
bits from the pages of old diaries or scraps of old papyrus, which is easy to
do once you’ve had a go at the tutorial.
Each entry is done about 4 times by different users, to iron
out any mistakes, then curators use them when they’re cataloguing this
collection. So, you are actually helping curators do their work!
I’ve not done a fantastic job of explaining it, but trust
me, once you start you won’t stop. One ledger or entry becomes another, and
soon you would have found an hour gone by and you feeling pleased with
yourself. I really love these projects, and it’s such a unique way of getting
to grips with Museum collections in your spare time.
Have a go at the science ones as well – I’m currently a bit
obsessed with the sea floor one!
Here’s hoping that more museums take a look at these
websites for their projects, and use them to their full advantage.
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