Crowdsourced Data: Accuracy, Accessibility, and Authority Survey

Introduction 

Researchers at the University of Maryland are recruiting cultural heritage practitioners and community-based cultural heritage stewards for a survey regarding past, present, or paused crowdsourced transcription projects in their libraries, archives, museums or community cultural heritage organization. This research project is led by Assistant Professor Victoria Van Hyning at the University of Maryland, College of Information Studies (iSchool) titled “Crowdsourced Data: Accuracy, Accessibility, and Authority (CDAAA).” CDAAA is a three-year project funded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services that aims to understand whether LAM organizations (institutional or community-run) can get transcription data into their core discovery platforms, such as Content Management Systems (CMSs), and if the transcriptions are discoverable and accessible to people who are print-disabled (i.e. Blind, have dyslexia, or other print-related disabilities for which they utilize screen reader software to hear digital information read aloud).

The survey will take approximately 20 minutes to complete and participants will receive a $10 incentive following completion, which will be processed through Tango, an electronic payments platform. The CDAAA team appreciates your time and consideration for this survey. Please contact Pi Van Hyning and her team at CDAAA@umd.edu if you have any questions about this survey or the project itself. This research has been vetted and approved by the University of Maryland, and the IRB number is 1985210-1.

 Who can take part?
At this time we seek survey participants who can comment knowledgeably about the approaches to crowdsourced transcription at their institution or organization, particularly whether and how resulting transcriptions are integrated with core discovery platforms or content management systems (CMSs) at the organization. From a group of up to 60 survey respondents, we hope to identify eight organizational partners (hereafter LAM Partners) to take part in the larger study, which entails a follow-up semi-structured interview and data ingest demonstration session if you are the LAM Partner is at the stage of ingesting content into a CMS, data repository or other online places (in 2023). LAM Partners do not need to have ingested transcription content into your core CMS at the time of the study, and you may have identified other ways of sharing your data, for example in a data repository. LAM Partners will be selected to ensure a diversity of the regional, collection, and institutional audience types (i.e. community-based, public, private, state, federal, academic, school, family/local history, etc), and a diversity of collections that have been transcribed to reflect a broad range of people, time periods, languages, and communities around the world.

The next phase of the study will invite print-disabled Accessibility User Testers to test the accessibility of each LAM partner’s CMS or data repository in 2023-2024. The researchers will conduct the accessibility tests using User-Centered Design protocols, and each discovery system will be tested by 3 print-disabled users with a range of print-disabilities. This phase of the research will not require your direct input.

Risks
The research team prefers to have involvement from survey participants whose LAM organization can be named in the final research outcomes of the project. If you agree to take part in the study your individual identity can be anonymized or pseudonymized, but we hope to work with LAM organizations that can discuss their discovery systems (content management systems or data repositories) and data quality practices without anonymization or pseudonymization. However, there is a potential risk that the exposure of non-compliance with Section 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) could result in your organization being identified in a survey or follow-up interviews and other research interventions being subject to litigation by individual users or groups. Therefore, your name and/or organization’s name may also be anonymized or pseudonymized at the request of you or your organization. If participants elect to have their individual and/or organizational data anonymized or pseudonymized, the research team will take all reasonable steps to ensure the security and integrity of identifying information.     

Benefits
There are no direct benefits to you for completing this survey.

The purpose of this research survey is to understand how library, archive, and museum (LAM) professionals make crowdsourced transcription (and tag) data accessible and discoverable to users through content management systems (CMSs). We are particularly interested in whether transcriptions are discoverable and accessible for people who are print-disabled and use screen readers to listen to digital content online. Print disabilities in the context of this study may include visual, physical, perceptual, developmental, cognitive, or learning disabilities. By participating in this survey, you will be providing researchers with information about crowdsourcing data management which can help with making crowdsourced transcriptions more accessible and usable for people with disabilities and other archival users.

Confidentiality
Any potential loss of confidentiality will be saved in a private UMD Box drive for the project during the course of the grant, and then hosted for 7 years in UMD secure networked storage space after the end of the grant period, at which time all personally identifiable information will be destroyed. This information will only be accessible by the small research team for this project for the duration of the survey. All personally identifying material will be destroyed by December 2028.

Participant Incentive
This survey offers participants a $10 incentive following completion, which will be processed through Tango, an electronic payment platform. The CDAAA team appreciates your time and consideration for this survey. Please contact CDAAA@umd.edu if you have any questions about this survey or the project itself. If fraud or abuse (spamming, bots, etc) is suspected during the completion of the survey, you will forfeit compensation and your data will be destroyed.

Your consent 
To begin this survey, please confirm that you have read the above information, consent to take this survey and have your responses recorded and that you are 18 years or older by signing your name below and clicking “I Accept”.