Crowdsourcing at the Library of Congress: Campaign closeouts and Review Month re-cap

By the People Bulletin

Three campaign closeouts this summer! 

Volunteers have been busy this summer, closing out three campaigns in the last month! When volunteers complete transcription and review for all pages in a campaign, collections staff do a quick spot check on the materials before the technical team exports and processes the transcriptions for loc.gov. Once the transcriptions are uploaded loc.gov they sit alongside original images to make these collections more accessible. 

This summer volunteers completed the following campaigns. We'll let you know when these transcriptions can be found in loc.gov! 

• At the Library and In the Field: John and Alan Lomax Papers 
• Seers, Spiritualists, and the Spirit World: The experiments of Frederick Hockley 
• Mary Church Terrell: Advocate for African Americans and Women

Review month re-cap 

A big thanks to all of you that participated in review month in August! You completed over 14,000 pages, helping us get closer to adding more transcriptions back into loc.gov. Review is the crucial last step before transcriptions are marked as complete. We appreciate your careful attention in checking and double checking your peers' contributions.  

Thanks for sharing your review tips and stories with us all month long. We gathered up some of them and published a joint blog post with our colleagues at the Smithsonian Transcription Center. Find the post on the Smithsonian's site here or on the Library's Signal blog here. 

And finally, By the People Community Managers had such fun talking with volunteers during our joint office hours hosted by the Smithsonian on August 20! Stay tuned for future office hours opportunities. 

New transcriptions in loc.gov 

Thanks to your contributions, our team has returned transcriptions from two campaigns to loc.gov this summer where they can now be searched and accessed by the public. 

Earlier this summer, we published the transcriptions for President James A. Garifield's diaries. Garfield kept a diary from the age of 17 to his assasination at the age of 49 in 1881. His diaries provide a window into Garfield's thoughts, interests, and observations on the world around him. If you're hoping for more Garfield materials, never fear! We're already working with curator Michelle Krowl on an addition to this campaign. 

In July, transcriptions for General George S. Patton's war diaries also made their way to the Library's main website. This campaign launched to support Library colleagues who needed remote work projects in 2020. The diaries cover Patton's involvement in the Mexican Punitive Expedition, World War I, and World War II. If you're curious to know more check out this recent Signal blog post. We have more 20th-century history coming to By the People in 2022. So keep an eye out! 

 

Warmly,

Abby & the By the People team