This post is a follow-up to our January 2024 post, “Zooniverse Receives NEH Grant to Evaluate Transcription Tools,” which you can read here.

In January 2024, we received a Level I Digital Humanities Advancement Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, to allow Zooniverse team members to carry out an evaluative study of the underlying code, functionality, and user interface of our main tools for text transcription and analysis. This effort also supported the creation and dissemination of two surveys about these tools, one for research team members, and one for project participants. The idea was that, through these surveys and code review, we would identify a set of recommendations for upgrades and new feature development to help ensure the viability and usefulness of these tools in the future.

In October 2024, we shared an early draft of the resulting recommendations via Talk, asking for feedback on our planned efforts. We were able to make some minor adaptations based on the responses, but in general the feedback we received about the draft was positive.

Now, the resulting white paper from this project is available to read via the NEH awards database. To read it, go to the NEH Award Page, and click ‘View White Paper.’ We are now in the process of identifying opportunities to fund the development efforts listed in the white paper. Watch this space for future updates!