Crowdsourcing at the Library of Congress: Happy New Year from By the People!

By the People Bulletin

Looking for a new hobby or community service project in the new year? Look no further - become a virtual volunteer for the Library of Congress. Maybe you've been following along with our newsletters and program updates but never jumped in to try out transcription for yourself. 2023 is your year! Our focus for January is to welcome new volunteers and encourage long-time volunteers to try something new. This week, we'll highlight resources and starting points for transcription and review, useful for new and long-time volunteers alike. Next week we'll encourage you to try a new campaign and in the final week of the month we hope you'll try a new activity. 

Transcription tips and tricks 

The best place to go for transcription and review how-to's is the By the People Welcome Guide. It's the first step for any new volunteer and a great place to look if you are stumped by something along the way. Don't know what to do with a misspelled word? The Welcome Guide covers that. Not sure how to transcribe shorthand text? Welcome Guide has your back. Flummoxed by the long "s" or funny "f" seen in early printed works? Yes, the Welcome Guide has that too. 

Our friends at the Douglass Day project have also created a couple of helpful videos that go over the basics of transcribing and reviewing. Their videos cover the basics of transcription and review, how to get started, and some additional features (like tagging and the contact form) of the By the People site. 

You can also find more advanced handwriting help on our Resources page. Look for general guides to 19th-century handwriting and specific guides for 17th-century Latin (useful for the Herencia campaign). 

Still stumped? Reach out to other volunteers on our discussion forum on History Hub. Or email Community Managers for By the People at crowd@loc.gov. 

Need to document volunteer hours? 

Sign up for a user profile! The profile page keeps a count of all of your contributions for all time so you can tabulate your stats. And it allows you to return to specific pages you worked on in the last six months. You can even download a letter verifying your participation in By the People that includes the total number of reviews and transcriptions you've done. 

2022 in numbers

By the People volunteers had another great year! A big thank you to all who transcribed, reviewed, shared By the People with friends and family, re-tweeted our posts, signed up and read our newsletter, or in any other way supported and contributed to the program. You make a huge difference to the Library of Congress and we're grateful for you all. Here's what you accomplished this year: 

• Completed 171,000+ pages 
• Saved 620,000+ transcriptions
• Created over 42,000 tags 
• Finished transcribing 6 full campaigns
• And, over 4,800 of you signed up for a new By the People account! 

 

Happy New Year!

Abby & the By the People team