Crowdsourcing at the Library of Congress: New Herencia material and Olmsted challenge wrap-up

By the People Bulletin

 

JUST ADDED! New material in Herencia campaign 

The Law Library and By the People team have launched the final addition to the Herencia Spanish Legal Documents campaign. These 1000+ pages cover a cross-section of documents from the Herencia collection that were previously withheld from the campaign due to legibility issues with the digitized microfilm. Unlike the other categories, the items displayed here have been recently digitized from the original paper documents rather than from their microfilm versions. Jump in here! 

Happy 200th Birthday, Frederick Law Olmsted! 

Tuesday, April 26th was Frederick Law Olmsted's 200th birthday! All month long, we've been celebrating the landscape architect by challenging volunteers to transcribe different parts of his papers. First, we took a look at the printed items in his files, then we explored the folders that have seen little transcription activity, and finally we travelled around the world with Olmsted! Our volunteers have more than risen to the challenging, completing 1300+ pages and saving 4800+ transcriptions. Your work this month and every month will help us make these materials accessible for keyword searching and for reading-especially given Olmsted's challenging handwriting. The chart below shows the bump in volunteer activity for the month of April!

This is a transcription activity chart for the Frederick Law Olmsted campaign since December 2021, showing a bump in activity for the month of April 2022.

Volunteer Vignette: Laura

Check out our latest vignette from By the People volunteer, Laura! In the post, Laura describes why she volunteers and gives some good tips for new transcribers. Thanks for all you do, Laura, to make the Library of Congress collections more accessible for all! 

New transcriptions added to loc.gov

• Historical Legal Reports: Volunteers completed this campaign in 2 months last summer! The Law Library may launch a new batch of these reports in 2023 so stay tuned for more info if you were a fan of this campaign. 
• Herencia: Spanish Legal Documents: The By the People team can now export transcriptions at the project level! While the Herencia crowdsourcing campaign is not yet fully complete, we've added transcriptions from the completed projects into loc.gov.   

 

Best regards,

Abby and the By the People team