The Making of Our Digital Nation: Rose Holley at Mosman Library

Ordinary Australians have helped correct millions of lines of text in the National Library of Australia's Newspaper Digitisation Program. They have contributed thousands of photographs to our national digital picture collection and helped museums like the Powerhouse identify and locate the subjects of their historical images. They have transcribed birth, death and marriage records so that they are searchable on sites like the Ryerson Index and Family Search Index. They have made thousands of out of copyright books electronically available.

Rose Holley talks about digital volunteers and the amazing things they are achieving. She also speaks about the innovative crowdsourcing projects at the National Library of Australia.

Rose was manager of the Australian Newspapers Digitisation Program. She now manages the new Trove discovery service from the National Library. She recently published 'Crowdsourcing: How and Why Should Libraries Do It?', a paper that analyses successful projects and issues a challenge to libraries: Do we have the courage, and dare we give users something greater than power — freedom?

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