Hi Crowd!  I’m Lauren Algee, another of the Community Managers for crowd.loc.gov. I’m excited to help lifelong learners and the historically curious out there connect with the Library of Congress and its vast and fascinating collections.

My background is as an archivist and before coming to the Library of Congress I worked at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History in Austin, Texas, the National Gallery of Art, and the DC Public Library (DCPL).  At DCPL I managed the library’s digital local history collections. I also co-founded the DC Public Library's Memory Lab, a public space for digitization and learning how to care for your personal digital archives. I now serve on the board of the Memory Lab Network and encourage you to see if there’s a Memory Lab in your area!

Hi everyone! I'm Meghan and I'm a Community Manager, too. I'm really looking forward to collaborating, sharing interesting things we find in our collections, and hearing more about what sparks your interest in history. The Library of Congress has such depth of resources and we're thrilled people are keen to help make them more searchable and useful to many people.

Before I joined the Library of Congress, I had the chance to learn from and partner with volunteers at the Smithsonian Transcription Center. I hope you'll explore those projects, as well. My background is as a historian and cultural anthropologist - across my research experiences, I've tried to understand the ways people share information, work together, work through conflict, and use stories and digital spaces to understand and relate to each other.

Can't wait to hear more about what you think of and find in our first challenge: Letters to Lincolnhttps://crowd.loc.gov/campaigns/letters-to-lincoln/!

Hi folks! I'm Elaine and the fourth Community Manager. Along with my colleagues, I am beyond excited to collaborate and learn from you all. Please let us know what you find interesting, what sparks your curiosity or what features you'd like to see in the application.

Prior to joining the Library of Congress, I was working at 18F, an office within the General Services Administration. 18F collaborates with other agencies to improve how government serves the public through technology.

CROWD looks amazing! I can't wait to give it a try.

Hi all. I'm a processing archivist here at NARA, and community manager for the "Researchers Help" space here on History Hub. Having spent the first half of my career working with NARA's photo collections, I am naturally drawn to LC's fabulous collections too. Recently I spent a great deal of time annoying the Prints and Photographs staff with caption submissions for some of the distressingly large number of "no caption" images in the National Photo Co. and Harris & Ewing collections. The most rewarding part was identifying two of NARA's early division chiefs:

                                               LC-H2-B-8017 and 8018 (P&P)

                                                      Roscoe Hill, Division of Classification, ca. 1935

                                             LC-H2-B-8253 (P&P)

                                                    Thomas M. Owen, Division of Accessions, ca. 1935

     With over 30,000 images labeled "no caption" in the Harris & Ewing collection (and many more with such

     informative captions as "Man seated at desk"), this might make an excellent CROWD project for the future!

     Best wishes to everyone involved with this exciting new venture.

Hi everyone.  I'm ShawnMarie from PA.  I have a little bit of a paper problem - in love with all of it.  :-)  My favorite things are women's magazines from the war years, recipes and maps.  I have a degree in Geography but my day job is in IT Data management.  I've always wanted to be a librarian and to help people find things they want to know more about so hoping I can help out this way.

ShawnMarie

Hi everyone! My name is Sheena and I'm from Ohio. I am the director of the Hardin County Historical Museums, Inc. in Kenton Ohio. My favorite things are old pictures and letters. I have a Master of Arts degree in History. I'm really looking forward to being able to contribute!

Hi everyone! I'm Filomena from Portugal and I work in a University Library. I rely like history and everything related to books. I can't even get near a bookshop, it is my weakness, books. All kind of books and stories. And I'm very happy to collaborate with your project.

Hi everyone!

I'm Jennifer and I'm from California.  I'm a scientist, but I also enjoy reading and US history.  I love libraries too and am happy to contribute to a project that will help a major library make more historical US documents more accessible to everyone.  If there are any documents from scientists that need to be transcribed I would be very excited to help out with that as well.

PS, When I was in Washington DC a few years ago I took a tour of the Jefferson building and it was love at first sight

Hi. My name is Henry. I have a lifelong interest in History. I ahe read so much on Lincoln but was disappointed that EVERYBODY wanted to work on his papers and they were done quickly. I have chosen to focus on Mary Church Terrell. Amazing woman. One of the founders of the NAACP. She lived from 1863-1954. I'm learning a lot about Jim Crow and the discrimination African-Americans faced over the years. I have become adept at reading her handwriting so if anybody has questions, feel free to contact me. Among the tips, she frequently does not cross her small t's so they sometimes look like L's. She also will carry over words from one line to the other without a hyphen. If I think of anything else I will post it.

Hi all, I'm a government attorney by profession, but I took up genealogy as a hobby about 20 years ago. In the process of researching my ancestors, I became pretty adept at deciphering the handwriting in old documents. I studied the different styles of 19th century copperplate scripts and learned how to puzzle out the meaning from the scribbles. I hope I can put my somewhat estoteric skills to work for this historical project.

Hi folks --

I live in Durham, NC.  I'm a fan of history and have always loved primary documents.  I've long been a fan of the oral histories and photos from the Depression era that were made available by the LOC fifteen or so years ago. 

I love a challenge and it's interesting to me how quickly my visual system is being retrained to be able to read handwriting again, though I see so little of it now in my day-to-day life. 

So far, two of my favorites are a letter from someone who lost his position as paymaster, begging/demanding to be reinstated (I felt put-off and sorry for him in turns while reading), and the gift of a salmon by a Maine eccentric (and it was jarring to remember that as recently as 150 years ago, salmon was native). 

I look forward to transcribing more of these letters, and things from other collections.  I'd be particularly interested in working on earlier materials after these.

-Christy

Welcome Christy Ferguson, Rebecca M, and Henry Rosenberg!  I'm excited that you've joined us in this transcription adventure and that you bring varied and interesting interest (but uniform enthusiasm) to the Library's collections!

Hello! I'm a social studies and science teacher in southern WV. I was initially drawn to the Lincoln papers, but after discovering the Mary Church Terrell campaign I was hooked. I am particularly interested in early 20th century America and I am inspired by her work. Since French was one of the areas I studied in college (in addition to history and psychology) I have enjoyed transcribing the documents in French, and I wish there was a way to search specifically for these documents. If there is, let me know. Like others, I hope that be assisting with this project I will contribute to history in some small way and learn along the way myself.

Hi, All --

I'm one of those "lifelong learner" types who likes to do a variety of things. I've been a children's and reference librarian, a proofreader, an elementary school supply (substitute) teacher, and crochet designer and teacher, and, most recently, a dedicated transcription volunteer with the Smithsonian Institution's Freemen's Bureau Project.

Glad to be here, too!

Beth

My name is Julianne Mangin, but you can call me Julie.  I retired from the Library of Congress in 2011.  I was a librarian and website developer.  When I arrived in 1998, I was put to work on the online exhibits.  I loved the work.  I was also one of the people who coordinated the look and content of the reading room websites.

In retirement, I have been researching my family history and have written a book, which I am trying to get published.  You can find out about it by going to a URL that is my full name plus .com.  I also research local cemeteries and recently participated in a county survey of known burial sites. I have another website called petcemeterystories dot net where I post articles on the history I have uncovered about Aspin Hill Cemetery for Pet Animals, now known as Aspin Hill Memorial Park.

There are two reasons I have decided to participate in this crowd sourcing endeavor.  The first is because I needed just this kind of help while researching the family history.  This is my way of paying back.  The second is that much of my family story has to do with the many women in my ancestry who were mentally ill patients at state hospitals in New England.  I read in your newsletter that the history of psychiatry is a future project, and I would really like to see what you have.  In the meantime, I am working on the Mary Church Terrell papers, so I will be ready.  Incidentally, I transcribed some letters in French in that collection.  It was a challenge, but I didn't know if you have any other transcribers with that ability.

Julie

Hello everyone! I am a public history grad student who loves documents and just really want to get my feet wet in the world of archives. This looks like it's going to be so much fun! I love research, books, American history, and this is like the best Christmas present ever!

Thanks!

Jess

It looks as though folks have stopped introducing themselves. I think it's great to know a bit about fellow transcribers and reviewers, though, so here I am.

I'm a retired music cataloger from the Library of Congress (which is how I know Julie Mangin). I have worked with manuscripts a bit here and there, and with correspondence in German and English. It's a giant puzzle, and I love being able to decipher handwriting. I've flitted about a bit, from Clara Barton to a few Lincoln letters, to Mary Church Terrell's German diaries (but not the ones in the unreadable script!). It's great fun, and it's nice to meet a bunch of like-minded people. Hope to see more of you as time goes on. It's wonderful to be in on the project as it develops, and perhaps contribute to the process.

Sharon McKinley

Hello everyone - Donna here.

To paraphrase Anne McCaffrey - I'm Scottish, in my 60s, my hair is silver, and the rest is subject to change without notice.

I have, at various times, been a shop assistant, computer programmer, library assistant, technical support rep, secretary, communications manager, web developer, web accessibility specialist and online technical and admin support person. Heh! They do say variety is the spice of life!

Many years ago, when records started to become available online, I started researching our family history, and spent several years decyphering scanned copies of hand-written official records of births, marriages, deaths, census returns, wills, etc. I found a lot of really useful information in the FamilySearch records, and wanting to give something back in thanks to those who transcribed the records that enabled me to uncover my own family's history, I then started getting involved in transcribing records, so that they'd be available for others to search and read. That was also fuelled by my awareness of how difficult (or impossible) it is for someone with less than perfect sight to access the information contained in scanned documents - they rely on transcriptions to be able to read that information. So for some years I've been doing intermittent bursts of transcribing with FamilySearch and other online services.

Then I recently stumbled across a reference to CROWD and the work being done here with these fascinating documents which are of interest and relevance to people not just in the US, but around the world.

And so here I am to add my little bit.

-- Donna

Hello! My name is Erin, and I'm here thanks to someone on Facebook (can't remember who) linking to a blog post (can't remember which) about transcribers being needed for Suffragist documents at the Library of Congress. I'm new to crowd.loc.gov, but not to transcribing: I'm the Senior Cataloger responsible for (among other things) 16th- and 17th-century manuscripts at the Folger Shakespeare Library, so I work with documents being transcribed in Early Modern Manuscripts Online and Shakespeare's World.

The problem with having a job that I love is that it's hard to leave it behind at the end of the work day, and I picked up the bad habit of continuing to putter away at work-related things on evenings and weekends. However, I've recently begun making a concerted effort not to think about work after hours. The enforced change of mental scenery has been good for my well-being, but took away one of my hobbies. Now, thanks to having seen the random blog post, I've got it back!

Reading 19th- and 20th-century cursive is a relaxing change from secretary hand, and I'm enjoying learning about the American women's suffrage movement -- I'm familiar with people and events related to Canadian and British women's rights, but find myself having to do a fair bit of Googling around to figure out who and what are being talked about in these letters. Also, it gives me a kick to see so many Washington, DC, addresses -- yesterday I transcribed a couple of letters that Frederick Douglas wrote to Anna E. Dickinson from a house that I walk past on my way to the bus stop after work.

Hello - I recently stumbled upon the link for CROWD while visiting the LOC and right away my interest was peeked! I have been in search of an additional volunteer opportunity to coincide with my interests in genealogy, history, and sleuthing and it appears transcribing for CROWD projects offers all this and more.

As a young teen family stories from my grandmother were instrumental in guiding me to the world of genealogy. Initially, I deciphered and transcribed data from family sources such as the back of photos (another passion), bible pages and other handwritten documents. Later, working for a telecommunications company allowed me to transcribe unclear script for quality assurance and accurate billing; furthering my deciphering skills. Soon after, the ever-expanding internet opened a wide world of data which often required verification of transcribed information or deciphering handwriting to confirm the accuracy of family members on census forms. In the past several years I taken advantage of opportunities to travel overseas and discover new sources of family data like a recent visit to the Irish Family History Centre in Dublin where I located a potential new family member.

I am excited now to learn more about transcribing and contributing toward the needs of CROWD projects! 

~Deborah (Deb) Hathorn

Hello. When I saw a League of Women Voters post on Facebook about the LOC transcription opportunities for the Suffragists, I was intrigued. With so many documents needing transcription and the current generation of students not even learning cursive, I felt a sense of urgency. A professional writer with corporate and university experience, I have also worked in the public involvement arena as a federal contractor for the Department of Energy. Now retired, I am a docent emerita at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and a volunteer for my local library, where I have taught English as a Second Language and currently work in the vintage and “gently used” bookstore. A few years ago, NARA unearthed a box of what turned out to be Reagan’s lifelong collection of notecards with quotes, jokes, stories and other information he sprinkled in his speeches and writing. No one had known previously of its existence. I was too late to be involved in that project, but who knows what treasures we will uncover through the LOC transcription projects!

Hello everyone!  My name is Terri from DE.  I just have a general interest in history.  I've worked as a medical transcriptionist in the past so transcribing from written documents is slightly different for me since I would normally transcribe from dictated charts; however, the review process is the same.  I'm a bit of a perfectionist and I TRY to let super minor errors go in the interest of time (absence of line breaks EEEEK) just so that the document doesn't have to be re-reviewed after I make my changes....but it's hard!!!!     I think it would be nice to differentiate between documents needing a first review and those that were previously reviewed.

I do tend to "skip around".  I loved the left-handed penmanship contest!  The stories were fascinating.  I'm also enjoying transcribing Carrie Chapman Catt correspondence and Anna Dickinson's legal documents.   I also like to google addresses in the correspondence just to see where these people lived and if the buildings are still standing, etc.  Weird?  I think not!

Thanks for letting me join the community!

Hi everyone! My name is Lauren and I live in Atlanta, GA. I'm here thanks to a tweet by Mental Floss stating that help was needed to transcribe thousands of pages of suffragist documents. I've always been into history, and my grandfather was a genealogist. But, more than anything, I'm obsessed with puzzles of all kinds - jigsaw, crossword, etc., and I'm far too detailed for my own good. Professionally, I'm a quality assurance auditor, which means I audit the work of all the other auditors in my department. 

I enjoy both transcribing and reviewing, and these documents provide a certain insight into history not found elsewhere. I'm also happy that I can contribute to the greater good without leaving my house

Hi! My name is Chloe and I'm a college student from Wisconsin. I found out about this when a former coworker of mine shared a story about it on Facebook. While I'm not going to school for history, I have a passion for history and currently work at a living history museum as a historical interpreter. I visited the LOC back in 2017 and loved it, and I'm happy I can help out, even in a small way.

So far, I've been transcribing and reviewing whenever I can (I'm hoping to work on this a lot before I go back to school!), and I've mainly been focusing on Mary Church Terrell's papers. It is fascinating what I have been learning from reading and transcribing her papers. I'm glad I can help with this project!

Hi Victoria - My name is Linda Edwards and my library work history includes 10 years at the Daughters of the Republic of Texas Research Library at The Alamo in San Antonio, TX  and two years as a senior genealogist of the Daughters of the American Revolution on Washington, D.C.  Needless to say that when I saw this opportunity to volunteer, I jumped on the chance.

I do have a technical question on which I have not found an answer.  I am working on the Alan Lomax collection and have no idea how to handle the correct transcription of the advertisements and comics that I am finding in the newspaper clippings. 

Any guidance will be appreciated.

Many thanks,

Linda Edwards

Hello! I am Sierra Bamiro and I heard about crowd while looking up volunteer opportunities on the LOC website. I took some classes in Library & Information Sciences, which gave me the opportunity to visit the LOC multiple times. I've also worked as an assistant at my university's history department and became interested in history. I look forward to helping the LOC and learning new historical facts!

Hi,

I'm very interested in American history and US politics. Right now I'm looking for gender breakdowns in presidential elections. But I'm excited to use this resource for many other topics in the future. The enthusiasm and curiosity on this website impresses me. Thank you.

Hello everyone!

My name is Talia Guzman Gonzalez and I am reference librarian in the Hispanic Division at the Library of Congress. I am excited to be part of this project and look forward to meeting everyone and working with you in making the Herencia collection available to everyone.

Hi Everyone, My name is Suzanne Schadl, I work in the Hispanic Division at the Library of Congress. I can't make up my mind between dogs or cats, so imagine me trying to decide between the humanities and the sciences. I am thus a lover of history -- especially the medical kind --  as well as lover of literature and language -- Portuguese and Spanish and visual I'll admit it -- so I'm a librarian, where it's all possible. This project is very exciting for me because of its potential to infuse our catalog with the Spanish language and help make important historical documents easier to find, especially for Spanish speakers/searchers!  

Hey Everyone,

My name is Stephen Mayeaux and I work in the Digital Resources Division of the Law Library of Congress. Very excited to be part of the Herencia project and looking forward to representing the Law Library on History Hub today during the virtual transcribe-a-thon and in the future.

Good morning everyone:

hope everyone is staying healthy.

my name is claude lubroth reilly, and through a friend, i have come to know about transcribing eighteenth and nineteenth century spanish documents/books: herencia: centuries of spanish legal documents.

i am loving this. i grew up in spain and i marvel how the language (mostly spelling and accents) has evolved over the centuries. maybe when public libraries open again i will dive into don quijote in the original!

it is wonderful transcribing the material when we are all stuck at home.

Hi! I'm Ariel Segal. I am a Digital Conversion Technician with the Digitization Services Section within DCMS.

I have helped to digitize and manage metadata for many collections at the Library of Congress. In particular, I have worked with the Manuscript Division to help delineate the endpoints of digitized microfilm reel images so they lined up with the different archival series in finding aids. I did this process for collections including the papers of Mary Church Terrell and Presidents Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and part of Calvin Coolidge.

I have a strong background in historical research, especially the history of science. While working on getting out-of-copyright books digitized at the Library of Congress with Internet Archive contractors, I found a book on the history and geology of the Isle of Man. To my astonishment and delight, I found a signature in the book which appears to be from Rev. William Buckland, pioneer dinosaur discoverer and subject of my senior undergraduate thesis. It was a moment of serendipity rare in this digital age.

https://archive.org/details/isleofmanitshist00cumm/page/n7

I hope to find more such serendipity in the course of this project

I have some experience self-transcribing when I was working on my masters' thesis in the early 2000s. My subject, Edward Hitchcock, an American paleontological colleague of Buckland's, was 3rd president of Amherst College and had a rather difficult handwriting. Here is another scholar noting some things she discovered there.

https://consecratedeminence.wordpress.com/2014/01/16/finding-humor-in-edward-hitchcocks-correspondence/

I already found one interesting thing in President Taft's papers. He wrote a delightful guide to Washington DC in National Geographic in 1915. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001263226

Hopefully DC will be available for tourism in the near future

Best Ariel Segal

Hi Crowd! My name is Carlyn and I'm one of the new Community Managers for By The People. I'm really excited to be working with all of you and to benefit from all the hard work V. Van Hyning (formerly of By the People LOC) and Lauren Algee have been putting in since the program was founded. I've been at the Library of Congress for a little over 5 years now (3 in Geography & Map and 2 in Digital Content Management) and will be doing work for By the People here on History Hub and on our Twitter account. You can also check out the Signal Blog where our Section broadly shares out about the wide range of work we do!

I have a BA in the History of Science & Technology from Johns Hopkins (Go Jays!) and a MLIS from the University of Maryland (Go Terps!). It's such a pleasure to be able to bring together my love of history, libraries, and digital engagement with the passion you all show for this project. I can't wait to learn from all of you and to hopefully see you all in the outside world sometime soon!

Namaste!  I hope everyone here is safe and healthy in these strange times.  My name is Renu Urvashi Sagreiya.  I am a new volunteer for the Herencia: Centuries of Spanish Legal Documents campaign.

I discovered this fascinating project from an article posted recently on the Phi Beta Kappa's LinkedIn page about remote volunteer opportunities for libraries and archives.  My bilingual and bicultural background in Hindi-English fostered in me a life-long passion for learning languages. I am a 2010 graduate of Agnes Scott College, where I majored in Sociology & Anthropology with a minor in Spanish.  During my time in undergrad, I worked as a Spanish Department tutor.  I graduated with a Juris Doctor in 2017 from Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law.  From 2018 to 2019, I taught a Continuing Legal Education course entitled Spanish For Lawyers for a local bar association.  I was accepted to the Master of Library & Information Science program at Rutgers University, starting in fall 2020.  My goal is academic law librarianship, with a focus on foreign, international and immigration legal materials. 

In my free time, I enjoy animal rescue, container gardening, Tai Chi, and Scrabble. 

i have to be thankful to the herencia project to give some structure to my day. i was transcribing what was a very tedious tract about two scribes (escrivanos), with so many repetitions regarding the various counts against them, ten or eleven in all, almost a he said, then he said, then the judge said repeating what he said, he said....on and on. and suddenly the judge condemned one of the scribes to four years of exile over a minor count. i gasped aloud! i really did! and from then on i had to find out what happened even though there were more and more repetitions, appeals, powers of attorney repetitions of the counts. i was hooked. I sighed with relief when the two scribes were freed from all accusations because the judge (who had it in for them) was deemed to be personally vindictive. after 75 pages of this, with its own set of spellings, accents, and punctuation, it was hard to go to another document with different accents, spellings and punctuation. anyway, have gone on for too long. must find a new document. keep well.

Hello.

My name is Carla.  I enjoy transcription along with historical studies.  I am completing my MA. in history within the year.  I have previously viewed the National Archives.  This will be an adventure and honor to contribute to this site.

Greetings, all.

As a high school and CC math teacher of 40 years, I have written and edited many articles for math journals, but I find the variety at LOC a refreshing break from that (who knew math was not the ideal?  )

While I have previously volunteered at several crowd-sourced web sites (Zooniverse IS a zoo), I am really preferring the historical background I am encountering.   One of the first transcriptions I selected was somewhat intimidating -- a full page of want ads -- but it was from an 1862 newspaper in Columbia, MO, home to my alma mater.  I actually did not think about the virus for over 4 hours.

I do believe that having graded over 1.5 million math problems is helpful when interpreting the handwritten pages, so I recommend that everyone try grading some student papers during this pandemic. 

Hello,

My name is Samantha and I'm a self-proclaimed Texaholic. I live in Texas and love it. In particular, I'm from El Paso and do a lot of reading about the history of the area and keep up with current happenings.

I have a bachelor's degree in English & American Literature, with a concentration in Shakespeare. Last spring I earned my Master's degree in Library Science from the University of North Texas. I'm currently unemployed and looking for library work in my area, but it is slim pickings right now with the pandemic going on. While at UNT I did my practicum at the Border Heritage Archives Center at one of the public library branches and loved learning about archiving and providing metadata for items. After my practicum ended I started seeking out digital volunteer opportunities and found a few. I started doing oral history transcriptions with the Grand Canyon Historical Society, doing citizen science/archiving on Zooniverse, and I also did some digital transcription with Smithsonian.

I started trying to help out here because I really enjoy trying to make materials available to the public and stumbled across it while trying to provide more accurate information for an image of a place near El Paso, which did not have accurate location information. I also figure that this will help me build up and maintain some of my library skillsets while I keep on with my job hunt. Maybe help me find more resources to help researchers and patrons. I have yet to work on handwritten documents, because they seem rather daunting, but in time I hope to start. My dream is to be able to do this kind of work in my community, while getting an actual paycheck for it. I love volunteering and would do it all day, every day, if only bills didn't exist. 

I'm really looking forward to helping out around this community!

Hello everyone!

My name is Sam Schireson and I am a Digital Collections Specialist at the Library of Congress, working on the By the People crowdsourcing effort. I have the incredibly fortunate opportunity to work with historians, archivists, and enthusiastic volunteers both within and outside of the Library. I look forward to exploring History Hub and (virtually) meeting everyone involved in moving forward these important projects!

I have a background in Archival Sciences with an MLIS in Archive Management from UPitt. I have previously worked with special collections and archival materials at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Libraries and the National Gallery of Art Library.

Cheers!

Sam

Hi all!

I'm Jen, currently in Dearborn, MI. I don't remember how I heard about By the People - somewhere on the internet, whether it was Facebook or Neatorama or somewhere else I don't recall. I'm taking a long-planned break from work, but had to cancel travel plans in this Summer of CoVID and found a lot of time on my hands, and this makes me feel a little useful at least.  Plus I love the puzzle-solving aspect of transcribing. I'm working on the letters of Kitty Barry Blackwell.  The early ones were full of fun family gossip and descriptions of places she was visiting, like Switzerland, which is one of the places I was supposed to visit this summer.  From her later ones, I'm learning a lot about the politics of and social reforms going on in 19th-century England, which is fascinating.  I've gone down a number of Wikipedia rabbit-holes in this process.  Looking forward to more!

Jen

     Hi!  My name is Jeanna (like Gina only with more/different letters )  I came across this project while looking for opportunities for my High School daughter to volunteer virtually during COVID and in the span of 3 days I'm the one who has become hooked!  I love words, particularly written words.  I love how they look on the page.  I love the nuance of penmanship (or lack thereof).  I love their meaning and their emotion.  I love the pictures they paint and the stories they tell.  For me, this is like starting a treasure hunt.    As ordinary as the words may seem, for each page before us, there is a reason why those specific words were put on that specific page and we get the privilege of figuring it out now all these years later.  How absolutely incredible is that?!?!?

Hi I'm Pete.  I'm a retired 70 year old.  I was a systems guy. I got into data analysis in the latter part of my career.  Now I boat, fish, and watch my grand daughters 2 days per week.  Last winter I zoomed a presentation on the Appleton Family given by the Massachusetts-based Trustees of the Reservations.  The discussion mentioned a need for transcriptionist volunteers.  I took the bait and have done 50 hours transcribing Shaker journals for the Trustees' Fruitlands collection.  I love it and want more.

Interests:

- History of Taunton MA,  Bridgewater MA where my forebearers are from.

- Company/business documents

- Automated/Artificial Intelligence-based transcription of Historical documents.  (As a former data analyst I figure I could have probably trained a model to transcribe the Shaker journals - do most of the grunt work anyway.)  I suppose there is already software to do this.  I suppose that the Nat. Archives already has such software.  I would be interested in participating in the setup/training of these models.  For example, military documents with its voluminous formulaic standard jargon would be a good candidate.  I know.  I was one of the last of the Vietnam era draftees.  I spent many an hour typing Morning Reports on multi-part paper.  Ugh!

Hi All,

It looks like I might be a few years late to this party, but my background is that I'm an Annapolis resident, recently retired, and I've had an interest in archived material of many kinds, particularly military history, for many years. I've followed the interest since retirement to the point where I now write a weekly commo on the topic that goes to a limited audience, with the topics based in part on my own research.

My background in research includes a Ph.D. from the U of MD in one of the behavioral sciences, done at the same time I was working, so with regret I never got to meet any of the really great historians who were at the U. of MD while I was there. I did, though, learn what it took to do good research, a skill that certainly generalizes between professions, just as usable in one field as another if supplemented by a little study.

I had a great chum, a national expert on maps and similar things, who introduced me to what a wonderful resource the LOC was and what one could do with its information.

On a different level I was interested to see information on the Harris & Ewing photo collection, a company which I know of from another hobby, photography, and a group which took a few great photos of my children before they eventually closed up. It's great to hear that their collection of images and negatives were preserved.

That's it!  Feel free to let me know if I can help any of 'you all' out on your projects if it's close to my areas of interest. I can be reached at philbussey@mac.com.

Best,

Phil

I was a volunteer transcriber for the Boston Public Library (via Zooinverse). I transcribed 1309 Anti-slavery Manuscripts from the 1840s - 1870s during my 18 months as a volunteer. This project was completed on August 12, 2020, and I was looking for another transcription project. After some searching, I found History Hub and the Library of Congress "By the People Campaigns". I'm so glad I did! I've decided to transcribe "Suffrage: Women Fight for the Vote" as it is a wonderful  transition from the Anti-slavery Manuscripts. Women suffragists were involved in the Anti-slavery movement, so their names are quite familiar to me, and I transcribed some of their manuscripts. My work on the Anti-slavery Manuscripts provides me with a familiarity of that period in history which I believe will greatly enhance my efforts in transcribing Women's Suffrage manuscripts. Thank you for the opportunity! 

Hi there...I"m Charles Trentelman, 72, living in Ogden, Utah.  I am a retired newspaper reporter and columnist and have a massive interest in history, photography and other related things. I've worked as a volunteer at local museums and libraries since retirement.

My wife told me about the LOC project to transcribe documents because of my love of history, the fact that retired people are bored out of their skulls during Covid, and because of a recent interest in reviving my cursive penmanship skills in an effort to keep up with my 10-year-old granddaughter.

As a result I'm enjoying transcribing hand-written letters. It's both challenging and enjoyable and helps my own cursive skills. I'm able to apply my research skills to get the proper spelling of names of people who worked with Teddy Roosevelt, for example, and who doesn't love reading other people's mail?

If I have one tip to folks doing cursive it would be to just scan through the whole thing first, picking out words you can read easily and studying how that writer makes particular letters.  This helps a lot translating what look like random squiggles into the letter S, for example, or whatever.

So here I am.  Nice to meet you all.

Hi everyone, As the newest Community Manager for By the People, I wanted to introduce myself! I’m really looking forward to getting to know you all on History Hub and helping you in any way I can.

Now a little about me-I’m originally from Buffalo, NY (hello winter!) but I currently live in Northern Indiana (also hello to winter!), and have a background in Early American women’s history, and libraries/archives. Before coming to the Library of Congress, I worked on digital collections at the University of Notre Dame. I was first introduced to transcription projects a few years ago and am excited to work with you all to help make the Library’s collections more accessible to a wider group of people.

Feel free to introduce yourself in the thread below-would love to hear about some of your greatest finds from the Library’s collections. And if like me, you’re new to the By the People initiative, I look forward to learning alongside you!

Hi--

I'm the author of two WWII biographies (one published 1994, the other in the works) and have conducted research on many topics, military and otherwise, at NARA-I, NARA-II, NARA-Atlanta, the FDR Library and the USMA Archives. I look forward to contributing here. Questions:

1) I have collected all of my research materials since 2004 in digital form. I would be glad to share scans/photographs with NARA if they can be of any use. I don't see any indication on the site that they would be, but I thought I ought to ask.

2) I have a good reading knowledge of Polish, German and French. Is there a way to locate transcribing projects by language?

3) My main WWII expertise involves the Holocaust and the struggle for independent air power within the Army. Any suggested projects will be welcome.

Thanks,

Tom Wood

Nashville

Hello everyone,

I'm Philippe from France, living in the suburb of BORDEAUX. I transcribe some texts since 2 years with great pleasure but had not create an account yet. It's done today ! Of course, it's obviously much easier for me to transcribe or correct a text in French. So if you need help, send me a message ! Great cultural and historical web site ! Tanks a lot.

Hello everyone, My name is Dorothy Shea and I’m from Atlanta, GA. I was a history major in college, a librarian and a news researcher. At one time I had thought about focusing on archives as a career but ended up in newspapers and the public library.  A friend told me about the various crowd-sourcing projects after my retirement. She thought it would be something I would enjoy doing. I reviewed all of the opportunities and decided to focus on the women’s suffrage papers. The topic interested me. Primary documents are important to researchers and historians. Making them word searchable is time-intensive and costly but very helpful for quickly identifying references. I am learning a lot about the suffrage movement, its leaders, and the arguments for and against why women should get the vote.

Hello, all! My name is Diane, and I’m a (recently) retired architect and construction manager from California. I joined this project some time ago, but work has kept me too busy to do much until recently. I’m focusing on the women’s suffrage papers now, along with the Lomax papers. My other retirement project (and oh yes, there are far more than two!) is improving my Italian to conversational fluency. I read Italian reasonably well but still speak it poorly. In addition to my architecture and engineering studies I was an art history major as an undergraduate, so reading history is definitely my bag. I am finding the documents here fascinating.

Additionally, I love books and games of all kinds. I met my husband in a James Joyce reading group, in which we have been reading Ulysses aloud together for well over a decade now. Books occupy a lot of my time!

I am looking forward to learning from the community here, especially how better to engage with some of the more challenging handwriting styles.

Pleased to “meet” you all!