Making History with Crowdsourcing

Abstract

With limited staff resources, the Smithsonian Institution Archives (SIA) in the early 2000s embarked on a new process to reveal the stories, people, and places embedded in their collections that document the history of the Smithsonian. This article looks at the earliest initiatives of publishing item-level digital collections that set the stage for hidden stories to rise to the surface through the public's engagement with materials in the Transcription Center. Such forms of engagement have included transcribing the SIA field books, following the SIA on various social media channels, and demonstrating interest in the “Women in Science Wednesday” campaign—all of which have enabled us to carry our message to new audiences and to enrich the information we had about our collections, something that would not have been possible with the SIA's small staff.