 So let's start with the first speaker Vivian Popkin from the research Center for Hansen and Baltic history Which is a member of the read-cobo, and I think we already did a summer school together. Is that right? Thank you for the introduction My name is Vivian and today I will be giving an overview on how we use citizen science in our Hansen document presentation and project We're currently a team of two people, so this might seem rather small, but considering that we are two people We've actually done quite a lot of work assisting With the help of our citizen scientists We started working with transcribers in 2018 first We used the free version and we've been a member since I think 2020 something along those lines and of course have Done quite a lot of stuff with them First I'll give you an overview of what our project actually is what our resources are and what we're dealing with and Then I will be Explaining how our internet work actually assists in gaining more knowledge about HDR and including more people then of course the main aspect Citizen science later. I'll also talk about our present social media influences Which is also related to the range of citizen science and then of course the final product or even search page This is an outline of our project first We have the research project our goal is to make available all the sources from the Hansa town meetings from the 16th and 17th century these haven't been edited yet So they are still in the archives and basically very difficult to use because they haven't been transcribed yet And of course you need to go to the archive you need to say okay I want these two pages and you all know working in an archive is quite a time-consuming work So to make them available already transcribed definitely lowers the time effort This is our goal. Our first step is as you've seen in the outline Gaining more knowledge about transcribers. This was how we started working with it This is how we gained our first group of citizen scientists Then with the help of our crowd we transcribe these pages and then we Publish all our sources with the addition of metadata for people and places. So with entities Now what our sources on the left side you can see all the sources that have been edited the first Hansa meeting so for those of you who don't aren't familiar with the Hansa that was a Lose collection of traders and trading towns in northern Germany northern Europe that stretched to very far regions of Europe and There wasn't a constitution all these things so it is a bit difficult to define the Hansa But if you're interested in that of course feel free to drop us an email Or read about the project online Well, as I said these towns met in regular Time intervals so every few years to up to every several ten years These meetings were completed with minuets the so-called recesses and they have been edited until 1537 not because something happened in 50 37, but that's when the editors just ran out of time and funding so Until the last Hansa meeting which was probably around 1669 There is some debate about whether it was actually the last Hansa meeting But it is in research currently regarded as the last one there are still a hundred and fifty years of Hansa meetings and they have never been looked at or very rarely because as I said it's quite difficult Work to you to work with the archives and it is time-consuming So these are our sources as you can see they have a very specific layout They are usually very in a very clean handwriting because they were written as a product not as a protocol But as a final result so as a collection of all the decisions that had been agreed upon Last year you mentioned the summer school We really started Broadening up our citizen science project We started our project in 2020, but in 2021 we were trying to really gain Get a group of a bigger group of citizen scientists and also include some researchers The summer school was targeted not only at students But also at early career researchers and basically researchers from any age group and career point Who were interested in working with a digital tools to discover history? This had quite the impact on our HDR strategy as well because a group developed who is now working on HDR models for the 15th century on Middle-Ear German, which as some of you might probably know Is still a time that isn't represented as much in the HDR models as some other times and if you're interested in this Visit the presentation of my colleague Julian Helmhagen later in the lightning talks Yeah, the feedback on the digital summer school was really really well It was during the pandemic So we were a bit hesitant on actually doing a live event and of course it would not been possible anyways With digital tools it is of course really really convenient if everyone is sitting on their laptop and can really try along and really Everyone can import their own sources and transcribers and try out their own HDR models So the digital format and especially the feedback on using HDR in their own research was amazing This is what we're planning to do another digital summer school next year Hopefully again with transcribers and other colleagues from other fields Two students also assisted us in our project after this for half a year Helped with the tagging of metadata and help with the proofreading Now the citizen science of course is the bulk of our project We have quite a lot of sources. So alone in the archive of Lubbock. They're around at least 3000 pages of Hanzo resources And to read and transcribe all of them in a team of two that would take years because of course This is not the only thing that we do at our research center Um, this is why we decided to include others into our research namely people from Well, citizens. So these are people without Not necessarily without academic background, but usually without academic background in historical context So some of our researchers and citizen scientists Are were accountants before they or are still accountants one of our citizen scientists was a doctor and they all come with very different interest in our project Some of them say, okay. I just really like the difficult The difficulty of trying to read an old text. I just really like the riddle of it. Okay. What is this letter? So for them, it's really just a fascination of trying to decipher something For others it is really learning more about the hanzo history So about the local history because they are from Lubbock or from the hanzo towns So they want to know more about let's say old families. Maybe even the family they are from or just family friends Or maybe just about the people that their names they read on the street names So this is really a very interesting project because you get to See completely different and new perspectives on your sources Of course, you get all the transcriptions, which is amazing and I'll talk more about that later on how we process these transcriptions But just the just the work itself is really quite rewarding because you see That people can engage with your sources without previous historical knowledge And really make something of it and it can actually it has a have a huge impact on their life because for them It's a hobby and something they quite enjoy doing um Our citizen science project consists of basically a dual strategy Um, it is a virtual project. So people can participate wherever they are If someone they want to say, okay I'm participating while i'm on the train going somewhere and just like to feel or feel like transcribing a few pages They can join us there others can do it at home from their comfortable couches So, um, it's really quite flexible and we also do citizen science events And this is more of a outreach and networking aspect too Because of course, it's nice to to invite our people and have an evening or Basically, usually we do a day where we spend the first half of the day transcribing the sources discussing a few more difficult Pages or more difficult words because sometimes there are words where you really need to take a closer look and um Try a different ways to decipher it and in the afternoon We usually do something like guided tour through the museum last time we went to the archive of libak So everyone could have a look at the originals, which was quite amazing um We've got a few um a few of our citizen scientists saying, okay This is how I always imagined historians work going to the archive looking at the originals And it's just so much fun to um see how people engage with your sources um We also did at the long night of the museum is recently a workshop where people Sometimes dropped in for 10 minutes to just take a look at the fixed similes We um were showing and some others stayed for half an hour to even up to an hour Just really delving into the examples of sources that we have presented and transcribing um as much as they could Now the thing is um, what do we actually do with the sources? uh, this is a diagram of our um read hanza sources rounds read hanza sources is our project um in german hanza kvellen lesen so Um, there you go. And in 2020 we started with roughly 400 pages Um, just a selection of documents from the 17th century and they are by now all available on our reading search page Um, I'll show the qr code later so you can have a look at that um It was quite some work to prepare this because of course in the beginning you really need to think Okay, what do I need to be aware of and when you're starting the citizen science project and there isn't much knowledge Not many uh help texts available It's quite a difficult way of implementing this In our second round we had well not that many more pages, but a few more and now in this year We are aiming at 710 pages And since april this is when our current round started our real group of I would say three to five active citizen scientists Have transcribed almost 400 pages Um the 363 I've counted here are from complete documents And there are some pages that are already completed and documents that haven't been finished yet So this is why I only counted a few of them Um, and that's amazing. I mean they are currently proofreading the htr transcriptions some of them at least and some others say okay they really enjoy doing the uh the groundwork doing the transcription from scratch and Since this brings quite good results we try to Make both options available to our citizen scientists because it is of course for us for gaining the Ground truth and for gaining information But the main aspect that we really have to consider when doing citizen science is that people do this in their free time So you want to keep them engaged and you want to really Make this work useful for you, but also make it fun for them and um, usually you found a perfect middle ground As you can see here our um workload actually lowered quite considerably In the beginning we had to prove really a lot and uh just Preparing the layout analysis and fixing these small mistakes was really important because this is what confuses people the most If you have a split line you can explain that to researchers who've worked with transcribers But it's really difficult to explain to someone who has never worked with historical sources Who might not even be that familiar with digital tools or even his computer um Our crowd is of a very young age group and varying background So explaining digital tools can be quite challenging Uh, although we've basically no one left who has actual problems who really struggles with it So this is quite a learning experience for everyone involved And of course they don't only learn about digital tools. They learn about the sources and about the handwriting Which is amazing because my proofreading has actually lowered quite considerably in the beginning. There were a lot of mistakes Um in the transcriptions that we got but by now I would say some of them read the 17th century um protocols like the newspaper And I have to maybe correct a lowercase letter to a capital letter or something like this But usually it's not that much Um here you can see our Well on the left side, you can see one of our older models This was done after the first two rounds of read hunts sources And this is a test page of our documents As you can see this is already quite good And some of the mistakes are just lower and smaller letters. So this is um, I think something That can actually be argued about um on our citizen science days Discussing about different spellings or whether it is a lowercase or a capital letter Or whether it is an ij or an epsilon is usually one of the main questions Um, and on the right side, you can see the model. I've created this just last week Adding the 300 Not even the whole 300. I think it was like 250 pages. I've added from the current round and as you can see the Mistakes in spelling have completely been eliminated and now it's only lowercase and capital letter mistakes And this of course makes reading the sources much more Yeah, well much better And of course, it's also rewarding to share this with your crowd So what do we do with these results? Of course, we use them to transcribe more sources Yeah, this is just an overview and how we've basically Been received and pressed in social media There were quite a few reviews and local nation-wide press Um, and on twitter, of course citizen science is always a well-received hashtag Another thing there is currently in germany, the new government has implemented a citizen science in their four-year strategy and the Independent company which is Okay, um, usually there isn't let me start again There is also this independent company which works with citizen science and they have also they have written a recommendation So 400 page book on how to implement citizen science and how to make funds available And which strategies need to be implemented nationwide and we've also been included there um So what we're doing, this is the read and search page We're making these These documents available and we share all of our information information with our crowd At the beginning it was a bit difficult to explain the Scientific approach and to explain that we're not doing an addition, but we're doing just the transcription Um, that is a huge difference because in our sources we have a lot of um different well V and u for example are used interchangeably although they wouldn't be Used as such if you were pronouncing the words And explaining that to people who don't come from that historical training can be quite challenging because you need to explain Okay, no we're keeping the wrong spelling even though we know what the correct spelling would be And even though it would be much more user friendly to use the correct spelling um This is why you need to decide on rules and this was one of the first steps we realized Because we didn't have any in the beginning. So two years ago Now we have them and you really need to think of a set of rules So you need to write some guidelines on how to work with your sources to people who have never worked with them before Really try to take that step back and think okay, if I didn't know anything about history and how to work with documents How would I encounter these sources? How would I look at them? Of course, that's not always possible to make that transfer of thought this is why these Meetings with our crowd and our citizen scientists are really amazing because there you have that exchange There you have people telling you that it's really difficult to understand why you would Use this letter and not the other one and where you can have all these discussions and actually work on these rules and write down these guidelines together So it is very much a project that Well, it requires quite a lot of communication with your crowd and it really requires close contact Even on sometimes you receive questions via email where you're not quite sure how to reply because you really need to reconsider how you look at your sources And this is also I think one of the gains of the project on the one hand you see how people who have not had previous contact with history Learn from these sources, but also how you can learn from this different perspective And of course explaining how you do your work Is a great way of actually learning how you do your work and rethinking your steps and really write a very Specific workflow for yourself and for your own project So as I said, this is the link to our read and search page There are currently the documents from our first round assumed probably from our second round available And hopefully by the end of the year from our third round And then the whole Hansel Ressesses from the archive of lubeck will be online available tagged with people and places Um, of course, we don't want to stop there because Digitizing all the Hansel Ressesses from lubeck is not enough um Our first goal is to gain more more material There are so many Hansel documents hidden in other archives all across Europe We're currently in contact with archives in poland Looking into archives in northern germany and the netherlands And we will upload them there over the course of the next years as long as we have our project Untag them with people and places so their database is searchable um Creating a Hansel database with no road which had a wonderful workshop yesterday We are also trying or we are already doing we've included most of the Hansel Ressesses And their meetings the towns that were present and linked it to the archival source from the 17th century and we are also working on concluding this Which is a long-term project because this is really just very time intensive But also something we include in our summer school So in a way it's not citizen science but more researchers including science um And of course create more hdr models because as much fun as it is to really transcribe from scratch A lot of our users and citizen science are aware that there is a faster way of doing this So they are asking us okay Is there a new model because the current one it's not that good And then you really have to you really have to give them something and this is something that motivates a lot Because you see not only are you doing this research to bring your own project along But you're doing this because there are people who are sitting at home And they're just plating a new material for their hobby. So I would say uh 11 out of 10 I recommend citizen science to I would say almost everyone because you can implement it even on a smaller project um In a relatively time efficient way if you put in the work at the beginning it just becomes very very efficient at the end I would say thank you for your attention and if there are any questions feel free to ask them I have some flyers for our project here. So if you're interested Uh, I'll hand them out later and this is the link to our project page. Thank you very much From still off I guess now it's working. Thank you very much for your presentation and as you already said Give us some questions, please Yes, that's impressive. Um, I was wondering how do you do the distribution of the Uh of the documents and do you use scans or registration or whole documents? Um, that depends We usually have the whole document. We have a collection that is publicly accessible and Well, to be honest, I usually just ask our citizen science Do you have a favorite documents that you want to take a closer look at next? Because some of them usually just click around in the collection and it's not sometimes they pick documents that look more difficult and handwriting. So it's more It's a bit of a challenge and sometimes recently we've had two documents from 1518 and one of our citizen scientists Had the theory that it is the same scribe So he wanted to transcribe all the documents in this um in around plus minus five years from 1518 So, um, it really varies a lot because depending on which interest your your crowd brings into the project Their requests change and of course also the distribution Transcribes has that user activity function, which is great if you just want to see who's currently working on what project And I also just keep keep a simple word document where I note down who's working on which which page is But usually it's one document. So one recess per person Okay We've got a question here in front Thank you Thank you for this very inspiring talk. I have two questions one about about your workflow If I did not misunderstand you are doing the Quality check yourself once the volunteers transcribe you go over them Or is there a way to maybe implement Quality control by the by the volunteers themselves Is there a way to for example ask a second volunteer or third volunteer to go over the transcriptions and related to that do you ask volunteers to transcribe from scratch or do they just correct the hdr process transcriptions And my other question or the third question I guess is how did you find the right crowd? I am currently Working on building and promoting my own crowdsourcing project in a different platform not in transcribes And we are we know that there is a community who Who will be very interested in this kind of work? But we are really struggling to find the correct venue to reach to them. So what was your pr strategy? Thank you Well, I start with a thank you a question. I start with the last one first Our pr strategy was I think quite accidental actually We started a project during the pandemic because we just thought it would be nice to do something very different from for change And we mentioned our project or it was mentioned since we're Our offices are located at the museum and we work very closely with the museum for hansel history And I think it was first mentioned during one of the guided tours And that's how we got a few sign scientists and then the independent company I mentioned They have a platform where they list all the citizen science projects in germany It might be germany and german speaking countries I'm not a hundred percent certain and our project is listed there We are also aiming to include our project and other citizen science platform that are more europe inclusive because It can be possible to work on our sources even if you're not a hundred percent Sure in speaking german since it's an older version of german anyways Um, so this is how we found our crowd and Finding a good crowd. I think that just happens on the way because the people learn and if they're really determined and Finding joy in the project and they learn while they're doing it basically And the people who say okay, it's a bit more a bit too advanced for me Or maybe they're not comfortable with working so closely with digital tools. They usually don't don't stick around for that long um Or they go to other citizen science projects So you really or they only come to the um life events So to say because for them it might be more comfortable working with a paper print or a facsimile So this is basically how we how we got our crowd um We do have some who proofread but um, there's also one of our citizen scientists who is doing or assisting us with the layout analysis So the skill set varies as well But um, currently i'm doing the proofreading Just so we have somewhere news from historic contracts doing the I say final tech and also because we're doing the tagging with metadata We do that via the search function So search for names search for places and then we tag all of them But since i'm doing the proofreading sometimes Especially with names names that are only mentioned once or twice in the documents You don't find them at the search version because you don't know what to look for So, uh, this is why I also do the tagging sort of on the go and why someone needs to go currently over the documents as one final step Okay, I think anamika you had a question as well if I saw that correctly Well given the workshop, uh, we gave uh, it might be an obvious question But how do you acknowledge, uh, the participation or the contributions of your crowd? What is your solution to that? Yeah, that is a good question. Um, we on our written search page. We are aiming to have a Sort of a thank you for our citizen scientists, but not all of them are comfortable with being mentioned by name So basically we just mention our crowd there and we do on these life events They are free for them. So we invite them into our museum. There is food. There is drinks There's usually free entrance to the museum to the exhibition and the guided tour Um, I visit to the archives and all these things. So we really try to compensate that with events and with experiences Because as I said being mentioned by name is not always, uh, is not always what they're what they're comfortable with. However, um, the I think on the press page you can see here. Um, the press articles are a way for, um, for mentioning the people explicitly as well Last winter we had a meeting with one, um, reporter from a local press and a sort of like, um, country press And we invited a few of our crowd. Um, we had of course cakes and dinner because what else would you would you? Um, But they were mentioned by name. They were interviewed and then they were, um, there were I think two or three articles written in local and more, um, Um, regional press. So this is really, um, also something you try to figure out on the go Okay, perfect. Any more questions? Yeah, got one here in the fourth, yeah Roe Yes, thank you for the presentation. I have a sort of technical question about metadata And I would like to know how you saw you if I understand correctly, you include the metadata through tagging And I'm interested in is there a way to like connect this with the out The other databases like wiki data or something something like that That is a good question because we are doing this, uh, since a lot of names and places come up, um Over the course of the time we are looking at a lot of the names are doubled especially when you look at the uh lubeck mayors or The people who were in the local government a lot of they have similar names or even the same names and there is no universal spelling So the spelling varies depending on the year on the scribe and probably on the weather and the mood of the day. So, um It is very uh tough to identify a person just by name. Um, the national german library has a database where every entity is, um, Given a string of numbers and words or numbers and letters And while doing the tagging we do the research try to find as many people as possible And identify them with this With this link to it is a it is a stable URL or a stable link. Definitely. So this will be available for a long time Um, since it is a governmental national library thing And on the read and search page We link the people also via the g it's called gnd and we also link them via the gnd link So, um by doing this we make sure that once we tag lubeck We always end up having the lubeck in northern germany and not the one in america Since they were probably not present in 16 37 Thank you Okay So if there are no questions anymore, let's say we stop here um Also, of course You get one of those. Thank you very much for your presentation And then we'll move on