Crowdsourcing, Co-Creation, and Collaboration through Virtual Curation

In his 2010 book Cognitive Surplus, Clay Shirky writes that “The dramatically reduced cost of public address, and the dramatically increased size of the population wired together, means that we can now turn massive aggregations of small contributions into things of lasting value.” A similar sentiment can be extended to virtual archaeological curation—the creation of intangible digital models from tangible pieces of the past. The participants in this session are developing protocols and pooling efforts to create digital diagnostic type collections and other tools that aid will aid archaeologists with making quicker and more accurate identifications, and enhancing their analyses of existing collections. Crowdsourcing and directed collaboration reduces duplication of efforts while expanding the research and potential of digitally preserving the past. Virtual curation also encourages co-creation efforts at colleges and in the community.