Crowdsourcing/Restoration and reuse of images

Image restored by a Wikimedia Commons volunteer, from an original supplied by the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division

The educational and research value of images or other digital media can be enhanced by additional work:

• restoration (such as cropping, colour balance, removing specks)
• contextualisation (such as embedding a portrait in text about the subject)
• improving metadata (categorising, adding machine-readable information, translating the description into other languages)

Image collections often have content and expertise but not the capacity to do this in detail for every one of their images. So it makes sense to work with a community of volunteers who appreciate such images and care about enhancing them.

Wikimedia Commons hosts the digital media files that are embedded in Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia sites. Its content is freely reusable, either because its copyright has lapsed or it has been given a relevant free licence. It has reached many millions of files, partly as a result of partnerships with museums, libraries, and other cultural institutions. Its purpose is not just to host media but also to enable crowdsourced improvements.

1. Keeping everybody happy
2. Image restoration
3. Contextualisation
4. Improving image metadata
5. Summing up

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