Crowdsourcing at the Library of Congress: 🌸April showers bring May flowers!🌸
Library of Congress sent this bulletin at 04/30/2020 11:39 AM EDTYou are subscribed to Crowdsourcing at the Library of Congress from the Library of Congress.
MONTHLY CAMPAIGN UPDATES AND A WALT WHITMAN CHALLENGE
Happy Thursday, #volunpeers!
April has been a big month for the By the People team and we continue to be astounded by the amazing work all of you do! We have some exciting updates for all of you.
Blackwell Family progress
You all are knocking it out of the park with Lucy Stone & Alice Stone Blackwell! Nearly ½ of the entire campaign has already been worked on and a full ⅓ of the campaign needs review! While reviewing, you get the chance to read through some of the fascinating corresponce Lucy & Alice had. We have letters with the Grimké Sisters, Susan B. Anthony, and William Lloyd Garrison, all of which need review! As always, we want to hear from you if you find something fascinating!
Herencia Update
If you’re looking to stretch your reviewing muscles, you’ll also want to check out Herencia: Centuries of Spanish Legal Documents this month! The entire “Disease & Public Health” project is very close to being finished - could you be the one to help close it out? There are only 30 more pages left to review!
Walt Whitman Poetry Month Review Challenge and Webinar
Last year we launched "Whitman at 200," 4,000 pages of Walt Whitman's handwritten drafts of poems including "O Captain! My Captain!", selected letters, and the literary journals where he published works before gathering them together in Leaves of Grass. All of the pages have been transcribed, and 2,500 have been reviewed as of April 2020, but 1,250 still need to be checked before we can bring the whole lot back to loc.gov to improve search and accessibility. A good place to start is the Poetry collection, which includes a printed journal containing "Fancies at Navesink" (1855) where 97 pages still require review. Do you think we can review all 1,250 pages in the Poetry project by May 6th?
This Friday May 1 at 3pm ET, we're teaming up with the Library of Congress Learning and Innovation Office and the National Council of Teachers of English to host a Walt Whitman and crowdsourcing themed webinar. This virtual gathering will give teachers ideas for engaging students with primary source documents. Anyone interested in Whitman, poetry, crowdsourcing or libraries in general is welcome to join in! Sign up in advance here: a recording of the webinar will be sent to all registrants after the event. Learn more on the Poetry and Literature Center blog here.
