ABSTRACT
The New York Public Library (NYPL) has launched a number of web-based crowdsourcing projects in recent years, enabling audiences to help with map georectification, the transcription of historic documents, annotations on texts and more. The GeoTagger is a crowdsourcing tool designed and built to attach geographic metadata to items in the NYPL collection by locating relevant addresses on a map. As collections crowdsourcing gains traction in cultural heritage organisations, it important to develop online community architectures not only to recognise, but also to manage and coordinate a growing participant base. Founded as a repository for predominantly print and paper-based materials, NYPL is now exploring how to convert an analogue knowledge base into a digital resource of comparable importance. Migrating the sum of human knowledge to the internet is daunting, especially for resource-strapped cultural organisations. But these institutions, while lacking the financial and engineering assets of big technology and media companies, do have one ace up their sleeve: their public mission.
