ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses crowdsourcing and citizen science in cultural institutions, particularly Old Weather, which began as a project to digitise the climate data in historic ships' logs. Cultural institutions like the United Kingdom's National Maritime Museum hold a wealth of collections of objects, personal or official documents, books, maps, manuscripts and more. The practice of citizen science' involves members of the public citizen scientists' working with professional scientists to complete a research project, and forms a distinct group within the broader category of crowd sourcing projects. Crowd-curation projects ask the audience to submit and/or select elements to be displayed in an exhibition, or to help prioritise work such as conservation. Data enhancement has been the main focus for institutions undertaking crowdsourcing projects Old Weather was probably one of the first citizen science projects that combined common crowdsourcing techniques, such as transcription, with a historical collection and a scientific goal.
