(Image: Zach Rudisin; crowdsourcing is used by the US National Archives)
Here at Urban Ghosts, we’re fascinated by world history spanning the ages – and we know you are, too. For that reason we wanted to take a look at a selection of the unique opportunities out there to not only read about history, but to participate in preserving it thanks to some clever crowdsourcing efforts. Though some of these websites might require you to sign up, they’re all opportunities for the armchair historian to get involved from the comfort of their own home.
The Papers of the War Department
(Image: John Trumbull; Surrender of Lord Cornwallis)
The Papers of the War Department has amassed a huge number of military-themed documents from the young United States, roughly dating from the years between 1784 and 1800. Around 45,000 have been scanned into their system, and they’re looking for people to help transcribe them into an easier-to-read and searchable form. An initiative of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, the ultimate goal of the project is to make the papers freely available to all. And there’s a whole wealth of information just waiting to be cataloged.
Anyone interested in transcribing for them can browse available documents to find something of particular interest, and a quick look at what’s there now includes speeches from Albany’s 1775 Treaty Conference, a request for clothing for the Southern Army, letters asking for the settlement of payments and accounts, rent agreements, discussions on building and outfitting ships, the need for more doctors, and the appointment or promotion of new men and messengers.
Some of the documents are official forms and requests, others are more casual letters, while a few are even more informal sorts of ramblings. But all offer a fascinating look into the history of the country on a very personal level. And transcribing many of them could present a fun challenge, written in the hands of men who were all working to secure the future of an entire nation.
Transcribe ScotlandsPlaces
(Image: Diliff; Eilean Donan Castle in the Scottish Highlands)
As the name suggests, the Transcribe ScotlandsPlaces project focuses on preserving documents relating to Scottish history. And they’re using crowdsourcing to generate interest and get people involved. Many of the projects include Ordnance Survey Name Books dating back at least to the mid-19th century, gathered from all across the country.
There’s also a whole host of tax rolls whose names and categories alone provide a glimpse into 19th century Scotland, with documents pertaining to taxes on female servants, on shops and farm horses, on male servants, carts and carriages and even dogs, clocks and watches. The website also hosts the likes of the Alexander Curle diaries, burgh registers, health reports, gazetteers and atlases, and surveys of lochs across Scotland.
Browsing all the documents usually requires a subscription, but doing as little as one or two hours of transcription every week serves in place of a subscription fee – and helps increase the number of pages available, which is already in the tens of thousands.
Oregon State University’s Index of Post-War and Atomic-Era Letters
(Image: Oren Jack Turner; photograph of Albert Einstein in 1947)
After the detonation of the first atomic bomb, the world didn’t know quite what to make of the landmark event. There was the relief that the war was over, tempered by the knowledge of what it had cost and the realization that a whole new threat had been unleashed on the world. Oregon State University has amassed many documents pertaining to the Atomic Age that gripped the post-war world, and they’re crowdsourcing for people to help transcribe them.
Beginning with an appeal for donations by Albert Einstein, the National Committee on Atomic Information issued “A Statement of the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists”, which outlined the basic information they thought the public needed to know about the atomic bomb, its potential, and its future. By August of 1946, they had received around $80,000 in donations, all destined to help educate the public about the era they were living in.
The Oregon State collection is made up mostly of these donation letters, and includes some that praise the strength and ingenuity of the scientists behind the project, while others hope the development of the bomb heralds an end to war. All the letters are deeply personal, and a timeless glimpse into a world that in a split second had been rocked to its core.
New York Public Library’s Menus
(Image: Louis Sherry; 1917 menu)
If you’re looking for something a little less heavy to transcribe, check out the New York Public Library’s “What’s on the menu?” project.
The library has a collection of around 45,000 restaurant menus dating back to the 1840s, and they’re putting them online as a documentation of just how our collective tastes have changed throughout the decades. Included in the transcription data are things like location and dates, and they’ve already provided a tantalizing glimpse into what was on some of New York City’s finest tables.
Most are from New York restaurants that have come and gone – or stayed – over the years, and most were collected by one woman – Miss Frank E. Buttolph. She began her collection in 1900, and donated 25,000 menus to the library’s Rare Book Division before her passing in 1924. Since then, others have continued to add menus, and those that have been digitized have already gained a surprisingly wide audience. From historians hunting for information on past meals or pricing and writers looking to add a touch of authenticity to their work, the public library’s menu collection has proven extremely popular – and with tens of thousands of menus in their ever-growing collection that still need transcribing, they’re hoping to reach a wider audience still.
Transcribe Bentham
(Image: Matt Brown; Jeremy Bentham’s auto-icon at University College London)
Born in 1748, Jeremy Bentham is one of the world’s most famous philosophers, in some ways because of what became of him after death. Famously preserved and put on display at the University College London, over the years pranksters have stolen bits and pieces of his body and he’s occasionally been present for college council meetings.
In 2010, The Bentham Project, along with the university that houses his remains, started a Transcription Desk where volunteers could log in and start to transcribe the college’s massive collection of Bentham’s papers. Many of the papers had never been transcribed or even studied before, and the project continued to grow to include still more documents housed in the British Library.
An incredible number of documents need to be worked on, too. With more than 64,000 pages already done, the project isn’t even halfway to completion. According to io9, Bentham learned to write when he was a toddler and kept writing right up until his death. And we can believe it, with a huge body of work that includes the founding principles of utilitarianism. No wonder the Transcribe Bentham project is crowdsourcing for backup.
Smithsonian Digital Volunteer Program
(Image: Noclip; the Smithsonian Institution building, known as The Castle)
When it comes to the world’s biggest collections of historical and scientific treasures, The Smithsonian is at the top of the list. Going through their museums means only scratching the surface at what lies in their vaults, and the establishment of an online transcription program is proving invaluable in bringing more of those materials into the public realm.
Almost 6,000 volunteers already signed up for the project, The Smithsonian is still looking for more people to work on transcribing everything from ledgers and logbooks to field notes and journals. No matter what you’re interested in, something in the vast list is guaranteed to catch your eye. Interested in the American Civil War, or the plants and animals of the planet? There’s stuff there that needs working on. Prefer something from the Air and Space Museum, or the Center for Astrophysics? There are plenty of projects there, too.
The Smithsonian Libraries are transcribing pages of rare books to make them available online, while the National Anthropological Archives is busy cataloging stories that have been passed down through generations of different cultures. Preserved for this long, volunteers are helping ensure these stories survive through the digital age.
Transcription for the National Archives
(Image: David Samuel; US National Archives Building, Washington, DC)
Similar to the program started by the Smithsonian, the National Archives has a vast number of documents which it hopes to make available for public research. From the Papers of the Continental Congress to a whole series of documents relating to the life and work of Dr. Samuel Mudd – one of the men who was convicted for his role in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln – they’re looking for volunteers to preserve not only these texts, but photos as well.
Photographs make up a large part of the library, and transcribing the captions of the pictures will be invaluable in allowing them to be cataloged and searched for. There’s also a whole series of partially completed documents that just need some finishing touches, and they’re currently also working on a set of documents relating to one of the most fascinating – and ill-fated – of social experiments in US history: Prohibition. A section on Featured Records include those that are of particular interest to the National Archives, which the organisation would like to see completed as soon as possible. Among them are the likes of press releases, presidential messages and speeches, personal letters, and telegrams.
Europeana, 1914-1918
(Image: Bibliotheque Nationale; British soldiers play football in gas masks, Western Front, 1916)
Europeana is a little different, in that they’re not just crowdsourcing for people to transcribe documents they already have – they’re also looking for stories, memories, postcards, photos, and any other historical memorabilia families still have from World War One.
The website is dedicated to preserving more than just names and faces – they’re preserving the stories of the men and women behind them. One of their exhibits, The Men on the Memorial, spotlights the men from the village of Skelsmergh in Cumbria, England. The gate to the local church serves as a war memorial, but it wasn’t until decades after the war that enough information became available on the men from Skelsmergh who served and died. They have put together an online exhibit with photographs, newspaper clippings, deployment information and personal stories remembering the brave souls who left their home, and never returned.
Europeana has already collected and preserved everything from postcards, photographs and diaries to propaganda pieces and official records. Photos show men on the front lines and in the trenches, on the Eastern and Western fronts. Some even show what life was like for those who stayed at home. They’re doing it all with the help of the public, asking that people come to share their stories and their memories before the names and faces behind the numbers are forgotten.
The McMaster Postcard Project
(Image: McMaster Postcard Project)
Don’t have time to sit down and transcribe a long speech or decipher a daunting, scribbled diary page? The McMaster Postcard Project, run by the McMaster University Library, has set up a public crowdsourcing effort to catalog and document several thousand vintage postcards. Donated by a private collector named Morris Norman, the collection has been scanned but needs to be searchable.
Cards are all on the main page, and volunteers can choose to look at just the front or back of the postcards if they wish to. The project is looking for people to enter information like dates and places, while documenting exactly what the postcard is depicting. They’re from all areas and cities and reflect all manner of scenes, a great opportunity to browse vintage photographs and read all about those who visited these places. There’s no need to sign in to transcribe, comment and save information; simply pick an interesting-looking postcard and start clicking.
Royal BC Museum’s Transcribe
(Image: City of Vancouver Archives; Thomas Dufferin Pattullo, Premier of British Columbia)
The Royal BC Museum was founded in 1886, and since then they’ve become one of Canada’s largest repositories of historical documents and artifacts. In addition to telling Canadian history from their location in Victoria, British Columbia, the museum is also working to expand its online collections – and they’re asking for help in doing it through their project Transcribe.
Documents up for transcription include the letters and diaries of Henry Masterman Mist, an insurance agent who was working in Dresden when war was declared in August of 1914. Arrested in February 1915, he spent the next three years living on a racetrack that had been converted to a civilian prison camp.
There are also letters from the Pattullo family, journalists who spent the early 20th century traveling throughout America (and whose brother, Thomas Dufferin Pattullo, became the 22nd Premier of British Columbia. In addition, there are more war diaries revealing personal accounts of life during some of the greatest conflicts in world history, offering an incredibly intimate look at history on a personal level. The letters and scrapbooks tell stories that would otherwise never be remembered or recorded, a reminder that everyone is living their own adventure and has their own story that’s worth telling.
Related – 10 Amazing Lost Treasures That Have Never Been Found
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