Microtask has undertaken the enormous task of crowdsourcing the National Library of Finland — the process of digitizing its paper-only documents, to be more specific. Microtask and the library launched a first of its kind in Europe national e-program named Digitalkoot, and the first Phase includes two online games. This project follows at least 5 others, most notably the Library of Congress and Flickr’s joint image human cloud tagging effort, but it is unique in its own way.

“In ‘Mole Hunt’ (Myyräjahti), the player is shown two different words, and they must determine as quickly as possible if they are the same. This uncovers erroneous words in archived material. In ‘Mole Bridge’ (Myyräsilta), players have to spell correctly the words appearing on the screen. Correct answers help badgers build a bridge across a river.”

Microtask’s platform fragments and distributes a bulk of information across individual game sessions in the form of micro-tasks, and then assembles the correct inputs into complete documents. This is however only the first stage, and Digitalkoot, which means Digital Volunteers in Finish, will reportedly be expand to target “more serious history buffs.”