Crowdsourcing is a way for historians and humanists to engage the public and a wider audience through cooperative contributions to various different projects. The projects which are best suited for this approach are those that do not require any particular qualifications for members of the public in order to maintain accessibility. Such types of work include transcribing, certain forms of digitization, and cultural mapping. Projects like Transcribe Bentham and By the People from the Library of Congress, make use of public transcription for large bodies of documents which would otherwise take a small group of professionals a great deal of time.
In order to accumulate new crowdsourcing participants and retain those participants, institutions must find a balance between interesting material and ease of use/accessibility. This is oftentimes easier said than done, but I believe the key factor for maintaining engagement is to offer a variety of projects and methods for the public to choose from, paired with a streamlined user experience. Most people nowadays have very little patience for websites that are difficult to navigate, and this can serve as a major roadblock for institutions looking to take advantage of crowdsourcing.
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