*Extra Mile* — Citizen Archivist
“Discourse and critical thinking are essential tools when it comes to securing progress in a democratic society. But in the end, unity and engaged participation are what make it happen.”
— Aberjhani
Although we’ve been using digitized historical sources in our class all semester long, we haven’t spent any time directly thinking about how technological innovations have impacted historical research.
Digital primary sources are more widely accessible to those with the ability to use the internet and other online tools. Researchers no longer need to make travel plans to visit archival holdings in distant cities (well, at least in some cases — most archival collections are only partially digitized) to complete a project.
There are limitations and issues to keep in mind when consulting digital records (for example, when a paper resource is transformed into a digital image, it is taken out of context in certain ways), but digitization projects can also bring larger numbers of people into contact with the work of doing history — even if they’re not researchers themselves.
Over the past decade, archives like the U.S. National Archives, the Library of Congress, and the Smithsonian have constructed projects that crowdsource the transcription of historical documents to make them searchable and increasingly accessible through digital means.
In this Extra Mile activity, you will choose a document (or set of documents) that you will transcribe digitally. Your work will contribute to the type of crowdsourcing initiative that I just mentioned above.
Choose from one of these:
- US National Archives “Citizen Archivist”
- Library of Congress “By the People”
- Smithsonian “Digital Volunteers”
You will need to create a free account with whichever of these three you choose and you will then be able to choose a specific document or set to transcribe.
In a Medium post that includes screenshots of the documents you worked with, respond to the following:
- What document or set of documents did you choose? Why?
Project Website
- Did the website inspire you to get involved?
- What did you think of the design?
- Were you made to feel like you were contributing to an interesting public service?
Interface
- Were you easily able to figure out what to do?
- How user-friendly was the interface–that is, how easy was it to go from one step to the next?
- Did the interface make the transcription experience more or less enjoyable? Why?
Transcription Experience
- What was your experience with the documents themselves? What did you learn or get better at along the way?
- How did you use (or not) the meaning of the texts to transcribe them?
- Was it easier to transcribe those texts that you felt some connection to?
- Did you get a sense of how these transcriptions could be used? What cues on the website or in the document(s) helped you to get a sense of their potential use?
Overall Takeaways
- In what sense did you feel like you were “doing history” as you completed your transcriptions?
- What insights into primary research did you gain from this activity?
You can complete this activity for credit anytime between now and the last day of class, Friday, December 10, at 11:59 pm MST.
