Crowdsourcing and community engagement

Crowdsourcing, also known as co-creation or commons-based peer production, is a method any institution can use to do public engagement, outreach, and perform aspects of an open reference service. This session will explore in-person as well as online modes of crowdsourcing, such as community invasive plant species monitoring and online transcription projects. Whether you're working at a small public library, a university library, a special collection, archive, or other institution, there are various tools and strategies you can use to connect with users and build communities of mutual support, respect, engagement, and curiosity among your users and your staff and organization. Crowdsourcing can help you reach users with different physical dis/abilities, across a wide range of ages and socio-demographic factors such as education, literacy, and numeracy levels, race, religious, political, sexual and gender orientations.