Meredith Doviak

Hi Carla,   Thank you for your post! We are so glad to know you found the correspondence interesting.   There are several other records within the Endangered Species Delisting files, which you might find interesting as well: https://catalog.archives.gov/search?q=*:*&f.ancestorNaIds=5681090&sort=naIdSort%20asc&rows=50   Thank you for your…

Hi Darlene,   Thank you for your question, and for your contributions as a citizen archivist.   As far as best practices for transcribing award cards, we generally tell our transcribers not to worry too much about matching the exact format of the original document (this includes line or paragraph breaks or spacing). The most important thing is to…

Hi Gordon,   Thank you for your great question. You are right that these complex tables are quite difficult to transcribe, especially as the text becomes wrapped in the transcription box. There is no right or wrong way to handle these, but you will often hear us say that the most important piece is to capture the words, and ensure that the…

Hi Bethany,   Thank you for your question. I would suggest transcribing the footnote in any way you feel looks best, and helps the next person understand what they are reading. Here are some examples that may be helpful:   2 [footnote 2 see below] or 2 [footnote] or ^2 [footnote]   Thank you for your work as a citizen archivist. Meredith

Hi there, Laura:   If you are not able to replicate a symbol with your keyboard, you could use brackets. For example, type [checkmark] in place of the symbol in the document. Similarly for a line that is crossed out, simply type [crossed out text] next to the words that are crossed out.   Thank you for your contributions! Meredith Community…

Hi Natalie, Thank you for letting us know, and again I apologize for the error messages you are receiving while you transcribe. Our developers are actively looking into this, but have been unable to identify the cause thus far. Could you possible share the URL or the page or name of the record you were transcribing when these errors are…

We are glad to hear you are enjoying transcribing, Marion! We also so enjoy the stories found within records. :-)   As for the use of brackets, we typically recommend using them to indicate something in the transcription that is not part of the actual text of the document, but could help with the context, or the next reader's ability to make…

We are excited you’d like to help us as a Citizen Archivist. We have many volunteer opportunities to transcribe and tag historical records online in the National Archives Catalog. This work can be done online from any computer, anywhere, at any time. You can do as little or as much as you want. Everything helps!   If you are new to transcribing…