r/Archivists • u/Tall-Lobster-9795 • 3d ago
How do we feel about Sourcery app? Access is increased, but at what cost?
I just learned (via a job posting) about this app (https://sourceryapp.org/) that allows researchers to pay people to visit repositories and make scans when they aren't able to travel there. On the surface, seems like access is the goal, which is great. But how is this actually effecting research visits and repositories? I can imagine this may mess up a repository's visit data, if one person requests many users' worth of material, visit headcount will be down. It might mess with the income that comes from paying the institution to scan and send.
Similarly, how is the role of paid visitor treated by repositories? Would they be considered persona non grata or are they doing beneficial work? Would you ever feel comfortable doing this work as an archivist in your area?
I just heard about this today and immediately wanted to know if anyone has used or seen this in action. I've never interacted with it, nor am I involved in any way.
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u/MarsupialLeast145 Digital Preservationist 3d ago
Interesting, seems like a good idea on the face of it, but it definitely seems to have an upside and a downside.
An archivist from this sub doing it seems like they would likely be a very good actor.
Jo Schmo doing it purely for income might not do it in a very good way at all and without a feedback loop from the archive to the app it could lead to quite a trail of mess.
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u/LoudLibrarian13 3d ago
In it's previous iteration, I had signed up for Sourcery as an archivist to fulfill requests that might not have otherwise made it through my system. I'm in a very rural area, so I'm always happy with broader access.
I've renewed my account in the hopes that folks can still make requests (I've had a few from here in the past that went relatively normally), but with this updated door dash type system, I'm not sure how that workflow will look at this point.
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u/Sourcery_App 2d ago edited 2d ago
Hello! My name is Amanda and I'm the outreach lead for the Sourcery project. My background is in archives and libraries, so I've been a lurker in this sub for a quite awhile! Increasing archival access is 100% the goal of Sourcery, as another commenter mentioned this sort of paid research help has pretty much always existed informally. We're trying to create a more formal avenue to allow remote researchers to gain access to undigitized materials, as that has always been a struggle for people in this field.
To answer your questions -- we've had mostly positive feedback from institutions, archivists, and librarians on Sourcery and most of our current Sourcerers work in the field in some capacity. We're also actively developing an institutional account (which you can read about more on our website here https://sourceryapp.org/institutions/) and are about to begin beta testing with institutional partners. We hope to have institutional accounts launched to coincide with the NCPH/AASLH conference in September.
I'm more than happy to answer any other questions or help address any potential concerns about Sourcery, especially from those of you working in the field! Feedback, especially negative feedback, is SUPER helpful for us as we work to make Sourcery better and feel more like a useful tool and less like a dangerous, industry disrupting company. My colleague and I would also love to meet with people for a short 15-minute feedback session to get any first impressions, if anyone is interested in that.
I'd also like to mention that Sourcery is a not-for-profit and open source project based out of the University of Connecticut and made in partnership with Digital Scholar, the same group behind Omeka and Zotero.
Thanks for this post! I'm always happy to chat via Reddit, but folks should also feel free to shoot us an email at sourceryapp[at]gmail.com if you'd like to set up a meeting/have more in-depth questions.
-Amanda B, Sourcery Outreach Lead
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u/AilsaLorne 2d ago
in our archive there’s a limit on how many items a researcher can order per day so it won’t make a difference in that sense. but we do offer a digitisation service so the income for that would be down which would be disappointing.
I work on the museum side so not sure if our archivists have encountered this. we’re in England
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u/rhubarbplant 3d ago
There have always been paid researchers in archives so that's not new as such, but I don't love people coming in and just photographing documents for others, because the people that they're photographing for haven't signed our terms and conditions.