The Biodiversity Heritage Library is excited to announce the release of two new games by Tiltfactor that will improve access to BHL collections and open a new frontier for crowdsourcing and citizen science.
Smorball and Beanstalk were designed as part of the Purposeful Gaming Project, which explores how digital games can make scanned content more accessible and searchable for cultural institutions. Based at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, Missouri, “Purposeful Gaming”was established in 2013 through an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant and includes partners at Harvard University, Cornell University, and the New York Botanical Garden.
Smorball and Beanstalk were designed as part of the Purposeful Gaming Project, which explores how digital games can make scanned content more accessible and searchable for cultural institutions. Based at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, Missouri, “Purposeful Gaming”was established in 2013 through an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant and includes partners at Harvard University, Cornell University, and the New York Botanical Garden.
Purposeful Gaming: What It's All About
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| Sample OCR output of Linnaeus' Species Plantarum, 1753. |
This is where the games come in.
Smorball and Beanstalk, both quick and easy browser games, present players with phrases from scanned pages in BHL. After much verification, the words players type are sent to the libraries that store the corresponding pages, allowing those pages to be searched and data mined and ultimately makinghistoric literature more usable for institutions, scholars, educators, and the public.
Why Use Games?
While transcription tasks of the sort usually crowdsourced to the public can be interesting and engaging, they are often time-consuming and exacting. Games provide a fun, interactive, piecemeal method of accomplishing those same tasks.
“Cultural heritage institutions are increasingly benefiting from human computation approaches that have been used in revolutionary ways by scientific researchers. Engaging citizens to work together as decoders of our heritage is a natural progression, as preserving these records directly benefits the public,” says Dr. Mary Flanagan, founder and director of Tiltfactor. “Integrating the task of transcription with the engagement of computer games gives an extra layer of incentive to motivate the public to contribute.”
Why This Approach Is Groundbreaking
While many institutions have harnessed the power of crowdsourcing, "Purposeful Gaming" represents a new avenue of collaboration that promises wider appeal and endless possibilities for engaging citizen scientists in new, creative ways.
What's the Difference between the Two Games? Where Can I Play them?
Players of the more challenging Smorball game are asked to type the words they see as quickly and accurately as possible to help coach their team, the Eugene Melonballers, to victory to win the coveted Dalahäst Trophy in the fictional sport of Smorball. Each word typed correctly defeats an opposing smorbot and brings the Melonballers closer to the championships.
Play Smorball here: http://smorballgame.org
Play Smorball here: http://smorballgame.org
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| Smorball |
Players of the more relaxed Beanstalk game must type the words presented to them correctly in order to grow their beanstalk from a tiny tendril to a massive cloudscraper. The more words they type correctly, the faster the beanstalk grows. Players who accurately transcribe the most words will ascend to the top of the leaderboard as a result of their valuable contributions.
Play Beanstalk here: http://beanstalkgame.org
Play Beanstalk here: http://beanstalkgame.org
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| Beanstalk |
Now, in the name of science, go play Smorball and Beanstalk. And have fun!