Crowdsourcing at the Library of Congress The latest
Library of Congress sent this bulletin at 03/25/2020 02:38 PM EDTYou are subscribed to Crowdsourcing at the Library of Congress from the Library of Congress.
By the People for LOC staff
Dear colleagues,
We know that this is a tough time for many folks, and that it can be hard to figure out a telework routine on top of figuring out a social distancing routine. The By the People team hopes you are all finding ways of keeping calm, safe, and engaged during this time.
Telework support
Library leadership asked us to create special By the People Campaigns for staff to use during this period of telework. Last week we launched the first of these–a selection of letters from the Theodore Roosevelt papers. These contain a mix of typed, printed, and handwritten documents, most of which can't be accurately read by computers. Your transcriptions will transform these non-machine-readable images of documents from the Library's collections into fully word-searchable materials that will improve patron experiences and enable people who use screen readers or who can't read cursive to access these documents.
Although there are many fascinating campaigns available through the main By the People site, and many of you will have been focusing your efforts on these last week, we ask that you now only work on the Roosevelt papers, and any new campaigns that we will add to the site specifically for staff during this period of extended telework. Please do not share these links with anyone beyond LC staff. These materials are not being shared with or promoted to the general public. It is also important to keep staff and public contributions separate for reporting purposes, which is why we ask you to register and take part with an loc.gov email address.
Follow this link to our online staff guide https://crowd.loc.gov/for-staff/?loclr=eacwd which provides more detail about the special staff Campaigns.
Click here to start exploring the new Teddy Roosevelt Campaign https://crowd.loc.gov/campaigns/correspondence-of-theodore-roosevelt/?loclr=eacwd.
Office hours for staff
Have questions? Interested in a live demo of the site? Join us on Mondays for our office hour for staff. Next Monday, March 30th, in addition to a demo we have a special presentation from Manuscript Curator and Historian Dr Michelle Krowl, who will tell us more about Teddy Roosevelt.
When: Every Monday, 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Meeting number: 903 111 492
Password: gMW3BTh55W?
Finally, you may have noticed that the site was running slowly earlier this week. We are grateful to our colleagues in OCIO for addressing these issues and making the site work well again.
In solidarity,
The By the People team
