Case Study: Citizen Science in Digital Humanities context

Abstract

Modern academic librarians strive to qualitatively meet the information needs of their users. At the same time, librarians seek to take an active part in the organization and conduct of research. In this paper, we present the successful experience of Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University (Ukraine) in working on the wiki project "Dictionary of Borys Grinchenko" which uses elements of digital humanities, citizen science and gamification. The main aim of this project is to involve university students in getting acquainted with the Dictionary of the famous Ukrainian ethnographer and ethnographer Borys Grinchenko . During the project, students compete among themselves who will add the most quality explanations and visualizations of the Grinchenko's Dictionary words to the University wiki portal. The results show that this project not only promotes the development of university web resources but also promotes cultural heritage, develop successful team building, helps to the involvement of students in research activities. This experience will be useful for other academic libraries looking for ways to join the digital humanities and can be replicated in small, low-budget academic institutions. CCS CONCEPTS• Human-centered computing → Wikis.

Benefits of Citizen Science for Libraries

“…The authors also emphasized the importance of partnerships within the institution (in their case, Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University) as another benefit of citizen science for libraries. [17] About the experience of the University Library "Svetozar Marković" and their projects "Wiki Marathons" and "Transcribathon" wrote Mumelaš, Martek and Mučnjak. As benefits of conducted citizen science activities for the library, there is emphasized robust collaboration and outreach across diverse institutions throughout Serbia, integration of Wiki articles into the faculty curriculum, heightened visibility of materials in cultural institutions, the enhancement of library staff knowledge, and the establishment of robust business connections with libraries in Serbia.…”

Benefits of Citizen Science for Libraries

“…This confirms how libraries, based on implemented citizen science projects, can introduce new similar initiatives and additional programs. The authors also emphasized the importance of partnerships within the institution (in their case, Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University) as another benefit of citizen science for libraries [42]. About the experience of the University Library "Svetozar Marković" and their projects "Wiki Marathons" and "Transcribathon" wrote Mumelaš, Martek and Mučnjak.…”

“…Figure1. Benefits of citizen science for libraries[17,21,25,[30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44].…”

Građanska znanost i knjižnice kao njezini provoditelji

“…U projektu je do sada sudjelovalo više od 8000 sudionika koji su obradili 12 000 riječi Grinčenkovog rječnika. Dodatan značaj projekta jest promicanje kulturne baštine, promicanje timskoga rada te aktivno uključivanje studenata Sveučilišta u znanstveni rad (Morze and Varchenko-Trotsenko, 2014;Opryshko and Nazarovets 2021). Taj primjer ukazuje na mogućnost nadograđivanja projekata građanske znanosti pomoću uvođenja novih elemenata.…”