26 August 2014

Crowdsourcing -- making recently unimaginable amounts of information available to us at our finger tips!


Crowdsourcing has become a very popular way to get large amounts of material indexed and/or transcribed.

It’s neat to see more and more facilities and groups using this means to get more material available to more people more quickly!

The most recent project I read about is “transcribe” from the Library of Virginia ... “Help improve access to historic documents by transcribing handwritten pages and reviewing transcriptions. Browse the items in each collection (“Browse all”) to see which ones need work. Create an account to enjoy additional features.”

This just shortly after reading The Smithsonian Wants You! (To Help Transcribe Its Collections) “Many myths surround the Smithsonian Institution’s archives—from legends of underground facilities hidden beneath the National Mall to rumors of secret archaeological excavations. One underlying truth persists amid these fallacies: the Institution’s archives are indeed massive. Preserving these collections in a digital age is a gargantuan task, especially when it comes to handwritten documents. Ink fades with time, and individual scrawls sometimes resemble hieroglyphics. It could literally take decades.”


Of course, once I read a new-to-me project I then seek out other projects that are either new to me or that I’ve been reminded of.

Some other current crowdsource projects with a genealogical connection are:

Do you know of other crowdsourcing projects of direct interest to the genealogical and family history community?


Editor’s Note: Previous Upfront with NGS posts on this topic ...
+ NARA Citizen Archivist Dashboard Live! (includes transcription, tagging and other crowdsource options) (2012)






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