On June 15th we launched our tagging feature on the Online Public Access (OPA) prototype in another “citizen archivist” venture. Convinced that our users know a lot about the records we are stewarding, this is an opportunity to contribute that knowledge. As you search the catalog, you are invited to tag any archival description, person, or organization name records with the keywords or labels that are meaningful to you. We expect that crowdsourcing tagging will enhance the quality of the content and make it easier for people to find what they are looking for. A description of this new feature can be found on the NARAtions blog, along with a link to the registration page.
In the first month we have had more than 1,000 tags contributed!
Our online contributor “islandlibrarian” recognized Nantucket Island in the description of the series that includes the following document:
User “zarr” added Four Freedoms to this image:
User “sschlang” knows Wisconsin and added Manitowoc, Wisconsin to this image:
Join the crowd and add your tags!
Another interesting way to engage with the crowd! After all, a study has already proven that tags can be recreated effectively through crowdsourcing. Read more about this study at http://crowdsourcing.org/l/2812.
Love this post! We’re trying to do something similar with the Our Americas Archive Partnership site. We’ve added “user tagging.” We posted a blog entry on our OAAP blog about how to tag, hoping we’ll get more user interest in the feature: http://ouramericas.org/?p=209