In a year, we were able to complete over 2,000 pages! We are so grateful and proud of all of our volunteers for helping us reach our goal of making this collection more accessible for generations to come.
The Law Library is hosting the next Herencia Review Challenge! We still have over 5,000 pages left to review, and from March 15 to March 19, help us chip away at that number by reviewing a page from our Laws & Statutes: Crime and Law Enforcement collection. Follow us on Twitter and History Hub for updates on the review challenge.
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.
We started 2021 by launching our first Herencia remote crowdsourcing internship. Interns are working on a series of tasks that help us promote this rare and unique collection and make it more accessible to researchers. These tasks include: transcribing documents and reviewing the submitted transcriptions of other volunteers, assisting Law Library staff with the preparation of the next release (Phase 3), and identifying and inviting potential volunteers to contribute to this collection. Check out In Custodia Legis in the following weeks to read our interns’ interviews!
As part of our anniversary celebration, we invite you to our Lunch & Learn Webinar: A Conversation with the Herencia Crowdsourcing Interns on March 17 at 2:00pm EDT. Geraldine Dávila González will moderate a panel discussion with our remote interns from all across the country including: Teresa Kane, Courtney Kennedy, Jake Neuberger, Aranza Obscura, Emily Hausheer, and Lourdes Johnson. Senior legal information specialist, Stephen Mayeaux, will give an overview of the campaign and what to expect in the next year. To register, please visit our Pre-Kindle page.
Herencia is the first ever crowdsourcing campaign from the Library of Congress in a language other than English. This collection contains print and manuscript documents from Spain from the 15th through the 19th centuries. Most of the collection items are in Spanish, Catalan, and Latin. Royal decrees, papal bulls, legal opinions, judgments, and royal orders are among the large variety of materials contained in this collection.