One of the common complaints I hear is that young volunteers or students can’t read cursive. While it’s true that many students are not taught cursive as part of their school curriculum, that isn't an insurmountable barrier to participating in a transcription project. The medieval and early modern transcription projects on FromThePage are written in scripts that no one uses … [Read more...] about What to Do When Your Transcribers Can’t Read Cursive
Top Tips from a Crowdsourcerer
We've worked with Meredith McDonough at the Alabama Department of Archives and History since 2018; you may have heard us talking about her very successful WWI Service Cards project -- 111,000 cards indexed in 2 1/2 months. We recently interviewed Meredith for our blog, and her advice is so great that I wanted to share it with you. On prioritizing projects: All the … [Read more...] about Top Tips from a Crowdsourcerer
Public Crowdsourcing or Private Collaboration?
Crowdsourcing connotes a big, public project that anyone can work on, but what you may not know is that about a third of the activity we see on FromThePage happens within private projects -- ones where you have to be invited to transcribe. Since these are invisible, I thought I’d highlight how some institutions are using these projects. When COVID hit, many institutions … [Read more...] about Public Crowdsourcing or Private Collaboration?
Push vs Pull Crowdsourcing
Maybe you’re running a crowdsourcing project because your boss thought it would be a good idea. Maybe your outreach person came to you with the idea. Maybe you heard about it at a conference and love the idea of engaging the public with your documents in the deep way transcription allows. I call these “push” transcription projects. Or… maybe you’re … [Read more...] about Push vs Pull Crowdsourcing
Marriage certificate transcription helps COVID care (!)
Liz Coelho, Director of Special Projects at the Maryland State Archives, recently sent this to her transcribers: Many thanks to you for your help with our FromThePage marriage certificate projects in 2021. Your work has made it possible for the Archives to quickly assist many people with their requests for marriage certificates. On my first day back in the new year I got a … [Read more...] about Marriage certificate transcription helps COVID care (!)