Information society and its participation in the building of a knowledge base about Polish national heritage

Abstract

In the paper, a growing role of geospatial localization in presentation of various phenomena is indicated, as well as participation of the society in acquisition and use of geospatial data arising from access to Internet and mobile appliances. Passive and active users were defined.
Two projects are presented, constituting the first national crowdsourcing action based on voluntary participation. They were realized during summer 2012 and each of them lasted for about one month. The first project was led by Centrum Cyfrowe foundation and the second by Wikimedia Polska foundation. Their co-organizer and at the same beneficiary is the National Heritage Institute.
The first project - Poland „Open Monuments” – served to check and supplement ca. 7900 objects entered into the register of monuments. In the second one – Wiki Likes Monument– ca. 51,000 photos were made and geolocalization of each object entered into the register was determined. Comparing the archive data and those acquired from the a/m projects a considerable acceleration in acquisition of reliable spatial information was found, but at the same time necessity to have quality control of this information.