[Click here for the Spanish version of this post / Haz clic aquí para la versión en español.]
This week, the Law Library of Congress challenges you to help improve access to our unique collection of historic Spanish legal materials, Herencia: Centuries of Spanish Legal Documents, through the Library’s crowdsourcing platform, By the People (BTP). Our goal by the end of this week is to finish our Laws & Statutes: Agriculture, Conservation, Hunting and Fishing project from the campaign. After our challenge is over, we will unveil a special surprise NEXT WEEK!
As you may know from our announcement earlier this year, Herencia is the Library’s first crowdsourcing project dedicated to papers in languages other than English. This collection contains royal decrees, papal bulls, legal opinions, judgments, and royal orders from Spain from the 15th through the 19th centuries.
Review is a crucial final step to bringing transcriptions back to the Library’s main website, loc.gov, and making images of original documents more discoverable. Transcriptions also help to make these documents more accessible to those with cognitive and sight disabilities, who use screen readers. That is why we need help from our volunteers to finish the review process of this project. Anyone can take part—just register for an account to start reviewing. Thanks to the great work of our transcribers and reviewers, one of the projects, Laws & Statutes: Disease and Public Health, has already been completed. There are a few more projects that are close to being finished, including Laws & Statutes: Agriculture, Conservation, Hunting and Fishing and Laws & Statutes: Immigration and Foreign Affairs.
Laws & Statutes: Agriculture, Conservation, Hunting and Fishing features local and royal orders throughout the Kingdom of Spain concerning the preservation of forests and plantations, hunting and fishing regulations, measures to control food distribution and agricultural products, and even wine and olive oil production.
We have less than 150 pages to go in this project. Can you help us complete it by the end of the week?
Starting today, staff from By the People and the Law Library of Congress will be available online through Friday so that volunteers can ask questions about the collection and the transcription process. You can stay in touch and learn more about the collection with daily updates from our Twitter accounts at @LawLibCongress and @CROWD_LOC. Also, please feel free to join the conversation with fellow volunteers and track our daily progress on our History Hub page.
Volunteers with Spanish, Latin, or Catalan skills are encouraged to participate, but you do not need to read these languages in order to contribute to this project! You can learn more about transcribing this historical collection by watching our previous webinars (using the password provided below):
- How and Why to Transcribe Herencia (English) / Password: RtXH4sM@
- Cómo y por qué transcribir Herencia (Español) / Contraseña: fQ7SJjZ@
You can help us meet this challenge by participating as a virtual volunteer reviewer. No specific time commitment or qualifications are required. You do not even need to create an account to start transcribing, although reviewers do need to log in. Contribute at your own pace and at times that are convenient for you. Whether you are a first-time transcriber or you are ready to take on our review challenge, we encourage you to try out Herencia this week! Find a page to work on now.