[Opengenalliance] Collaboration with GalaxyZoo

[Javier Ruiz]

Dear all

last week I met with some of the key people behind an amazing crowdsourcing
project called GalaxyZoo. They are based at Oxford, in the astrophysics
dept, and the bulk of their work is to get volunteers to identify
astronomical features on images. One very different project they have done
is called Oldweather. Here the volunteers transcribe old ship logs, from The
National Archives, into a database of coordinates
and meteorological information. This is then used for modelling historical
climate change.

The transcription tools they use are some of the best out there for
structured information. They are very interested in the OGA and would like
to collaborate, like most good scientists and computer geeks they totally
get the issues of access and openness. We discussed the possibility of
adapting the new version of their software for the Schools Register project,
or if this proves impossible in a short period of time to work towards
another project. Their tool is not open source, but they are happy for us to
use if for non-profit purposes. We did discuss opening and they had not
thought about it.

We also discussed possibilities of using this tool for the FreeCEN and maybe
getting some developer time to accelerate if any organisation was going to
pay anyway but all very tentative.

We did discuss funding from Heritage Lottery and JISC (academic funds for
those not in UK) for the projects and putting joint applications.

We also discussed image digitisation. They currently get their scans from
TNA in a hard disk, but if we are doing decentralised scanning with hosting,
good API and connections become important. This is one the issues we will
discuss with The Internet Archive.

We will follow up conversations elsewhere with them, please mail me if you
are interested in being part fo that conversation.

Best, Javier
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