(9 June 2015) Today sees the launch of LibCrowds, a platform dedicated to the hosting of experimental crowdsourcing projects aimed at enhancing access to British Library collections.
The first project series, Convert-a-Card, is dedicated to the retro-conversion of printed card catalogues into electronic records, in order to make them available to a worldwide audience via the ExploreBL catalogue, which already includes nearly 57 million records.
The initial focus of Convert-a-Card is the Asian and African collections, and the catalogues involved are from the Chinese and the Indonesian collections. The Chinese collections at the British Library contain more than 100,000 printed books and 2,500 periodical titles, some dating back to the founding of the British Museum in 1753.
The Indonesian card catalogue documents nearly 4,000 printed books published before 1982, ranging from rare missionary works printed in Bengkulu, Ambon and Batavia in the early 19th century, to first editions of some of the most important works of modern Indonesian literature.
Read the illustrated article here.
