Community Collection....where the general public or members of a particular community are invited to contribute to a project by uploading their own content or adding information to existing resources. The Oxford Community Collection Model brings together online collection and face-to-face engagement, and has been successfully used to create digital, user-generated collections since 2008.
Run a Community Collection Online
RunCoCo is part of the Community Collections and Crowdsourcing Service based at the University of Oxford. It builds on the success of The Great War Archive, part of the First World War Poetry Digital Archive. We are currently working with a range of projects, including Europeana 1914-1918 - a community collection project for memorabilia and stories from the period of the Great War (1914-1918) from across Europe.
Learn more about our work on our Projects and Training pages and through the case-study Crowd-sourcing for engagement: RunCoCo, and the videos Europeana 1914-1918: RunCoCo (5.26 min) and A Postcard from Hitler (3.12 minutes).
Do you want to RunCoCo?
RunCoCo offers advice, training, and support to those looking for new ways of working with the public for impact, outreach, and engagement. Contact us if you want to RunCoCo!
Training and coaching
RunCoCo offers training and coaching to those interested in running a community collection. We have a set of ready-made training and support packages that can be tailored to fit different contexts and communities. We can also develop a program or event to fit a specific cause or group, and offer workshops on a range of topics, such as community collections, crowdsourcing, creating and using digital resources, social media, open educational resources and more.
We make material from some of our past events available online, such as presentations, hand-outs, links, and recordings from workshops, training events, and courses.
Visit the Training section for details and contact us to discuss your training needs.
Projects
![photograph of Bombardier William Gaunt [seated] from the Great War Archive](images/illustrations/gwa.jpg)
RunCoCo is involved in a number of current and previous projects, such as the The Great War Archive (collecting personal items from the First World War), Project Woruldhord (collecting digital objects related to the teaching, study, or research of Old English and the Anglo-Saxon period of history), Europeana 1914-1918 and Children of The Great War. These projects are presented in more detail in the Projects section.
Resources
RunCoCo offers a range of free resources to help you learn more about setting up, running, and sustaining a community collection. The resources include guidelines and work-flows, collection software, reports and case-studies.
Our report RunCoCo: How to Run a Community Collection Online (2011) presents a simple A, B, C of advice for projects and groups who aim to 'crowd-source' with sustainable success.
Visit the Resources section to learn more, download RunCoCo's open-source software, join a support network or access material from our training events.
RunCoCo was originally funded under the JISC Digitisation and e-Content programme - Institutional Skills and Strategies (Strand A).
