Modeling Crowdsourcing for Cultural Heritage

Despite the widespread prevalence of crowdsourcing projects in the cultural heritage domain, not all initiatives to date have been universally successful. This study has revealed that the conditions in which projects are realized, and the design properties of those projects, have a significant impact on success or failure rates. Through a literature analysis and close study of two cases—Red een Portret (Save a Portrait) at the Amsterdam City Archives and a photo-tagging project of the Maria Austria Institute on the Vele Handen (Many Hands) crowdsourcing platform—this study identifies those conditions and implements them in the design of a model to assist in the design and evaluation of effective cultural heritage crowdsourcing projects.