Crowdsourcing the world's heritage

NB: this post was last updated 21 February 2024. In general, I add new sites but don't remove old sites that are no longer live. This post is now supplemented with another on National approaches to crowdsourcing / citizen science. I've also shared a 2015 list of 'participatory digital heritage sites' that includes many crowdsourcing sites. Contact me via my main website contact page to suggest a site.

It's all too easy to forget that there are international crowdsourcing projects in languages other than English so I thought I'd collect some projects related to cultural heritage, history and science here (following my definition of crowdsourcing in cultural heritage as 'asking the public to help with tasks that contribute to a shared, significant goal or research interest related to cultural heritage collections or knowledge'). This list is drawn from my PhD research, but this is a fast-moving field and I was focusing on early modern England, so inevitably this list will be missing loads of examples. Please suggest links to help people discover new projects! Also, I'm often taking my best guess at the correct translation for terms, so please correct me if I've misunderstood.

If you're interested in crowdsourcing in cultural heritage, my edited volume has chapters with lessons learnt from a range of projects.

English-language projects tend to be easier to find, but for completeness:

UKirecord.org.uk/ (thanks Rita Singer )

USAarchives.gov/citizen-archivist and weather.gov/cle/CWOP  (thanks @BuffaloResearch), crowd.loc.gov, transcription.si.edu/

  • 'Your project goes here' – what have I missed?
reseau-correct.fr correction
Correcting text from the Bibliothèque nationale de France on 'Correct'.