Crowdsourcing: divide the work and share the success

Abstract

Purpose

The Agriculture Network Information Collaborative (AgNIC) is a voluntary alliance of members working to provide access to agricultural information over the internet. This paper aims to report on a group effort by AgNIC partners to identify institutional repositories with desirable content for metadata harvesting. Once identified, the metadata is captured through an automated harvest and added to a searchable resource database.

Design/methodology/approach

The project utilized a crowdsourced approach to the repository review. Partners were invited to participate in a harvest to identify sites with desirable content. A Google Docs accessible spreadsheet containing names and URLs for the target repositories was shared by participants and used to record results.

Findings

Crowdsourcing the review of institutional repositories by AgNIC partners was an effective method to complete a web‐resources project. Success was achieved by having a clear goal, defined steps, a shared document for recording results, and a limited time period to execute the project.

Originality/value

While AgNIC is a highly collaborative group, this crowdsourcing project demonstrated another approach to shared effort.

Citation

Britton, C.J., Level, A.V. and Gardner, M.A. (2013), "Crowdsourcing: divide the work and share the success", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 30 No. 4, pp. 1-5. https://doi.org/10.1108/LHTN-03-2013-0017