Crowdsourcing at the Library of Congress The Latest

New Campaign--"Herencia: Centuries of Spanish Legal Documents"

Today we launch a new Campaign called "Herencia: Centuries of Spanish Legal Documents," featuring documents written in Spanish, Latin, and Catalan between 1300 and 1800. Our aim is to transcribe the documents word-for-word so that researchers can more easily discover these materials. This Law Library Collection is our first entirely non-English campaign! It includes papers pertaining to laws, statutes, instructions, and decrees of Spanish kings, government officials, and the Catholic Church, including the Spanish Inquisition and papal bulls. Aside from English language titles and short descriptions created by the Library, we know little about the texts or the topics, individuals, and significant historical moments documented within the collection. Most names, places, geographical regions, and other details that would be of interest to scholars are still waiting to be discovered. Legal documents shed light on what societies and individuals value, and the struggles, hopes, and triumphs of people across the societal spectrum. 

Delve into the history of Spain and its former colonies, and practice your skills reading and transcribing Spanish, Latin and Catalan as you help the Law Library of Congress uncover the mysteries of this collection. Remember, you can contribute at your own pace and at times that are convenient for you. While foreign language skills are helpful, you do not need to read or speak Spanish, Latin, or Catalan to participate.

Read more about this new Campaign in English on the Law Library blog, and in Spanish on the Hispanic Division blog. 

Webinars, transcribe-a-thons, and new tools to get you started with Herencia

We're offering webinars about How and Why to Transcribe Herencia: Centuries of Spanish Legal Documents on Thursday, February 27th, and How to Host a Transcribe-a-thon on Thursday March 12th to help you dig in. These free webinars will be offered in separate English and Spanish versions. Choose your language when you navigate to the sign up page using the links above.  

Join our Herencia transcribe-a-thon on March 19th! You can take part online from anywhere, or in-person here at the Library of Congress. Our on-site event coincides with a National Book Festival Presents program featuring Jeffrey Rosen who will discuss his new book Conversations with RBG: Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Life, Love, Liberty and Law, and Dahlia Lithwick, a senior editor at Slate. Book sales and signing to follow. Learn more about the event and register here. 

We've also created some cheat sheets for entering old Spanish and Latin text, and Spanish translations of our Help Center and How-to documents.

Lincoln Challenge update

We came so close to meeting our Lincoln challenge earlier this month, but we're not done. There are still 29 pages needing review, and 12 in progress. Many of these are interesting and challenging documents. Some are in German, others are written on pages with severe bleed through. But we've seen By the People volunteers tackle harder challenges than these before, and we reckon you can do it! It's time to bust out your superpowers folks, and bring the Lincoln challenge home. Remember, once all of these pages are reviewed we can bring the whole lot back to loc.gov. 

 

-Victoria and the By the People team

Click here for more information.