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To a job well done
December Clara Barton challenge update
Dear volunteers, one an all,
I confess that we left the office on December 23rd worried that poor Clara Barton would be forgotten on her Christmas birthday, and our goal of getting the review pile below 3,000 pages was a silly idea at this time of year. But we arrived back on December 30th and were delighted to find the number of pages needing review down to 2,494! That's well below our 3,000 page challenge! We couldn't ask for a better birthday gift for Clara, who dedicated her life to relieving the suffering of so many.
You can of course keep reviewing pages in Barton's diaries, letters, poetry, and speeches. There's still plenty to do, and lots of cool material for you to peruse. When I transcribe or review I tend to look for documents near completion. On the Campaign page and look for items with a mostly dark blue progress bar, indicating most pages are complete. I then use the "review," "in progress," and "not started" filters to select my activity. Can you help us complete the last few pages of these diaries so we can bring the text to loc.gov in the new year?
Next up: Folklorist Alan Lomax
You all are so good at challenges, we have another for the month of January! We're featuring Alan Lomax, whose 105th birthday would be on January 31st. Lomax was the most famous American folklorist of the 20th century. From 1936 to 1966 he traveled the country and the world recording thousands of musicians, storytellers, and other tradition-bearers. He worked with friends and family, as well as cultural icons such as Zora Neale Hurston and Pete Seeger. His detailed field notebooks document encounters with Muddy Waters, Lead Belly, Bessie Jones and others.
So far we've made U.S. and Caribbean materials available, and are waiting until these are mostly complete before releasing materials from the United Kingdom. Please put your considerable talents and energy towards reviewing pages, to bring the "completed" count to 3,000. This will let us to start bringing transcriptions back to loc.gov, and will move us closer to adding new materials.
We hope you have a safe, happy, and healthy new year.
-Victoria and the By the People team
