In March 2021, the Law Library of Congress celebrated the first anniversary of the crowdsourcing campaign, Herencia: Centuries of Spanish Legal Documents. Herencia became the first ever crowdsourcing campaign in By the People in a language other than English. This rare collection of Spanish legal documents from the 15th to 19th centuries includes royal decrees, papal bulls, legal opinions, judgments, and royal orders in Spanish, Latin, and Catalan.
As part of our anniversary celebration, we held a review challenge to finish the Laws & Statutes: Crime and Law Enforcement project. Thanks to our incredible volunteers, we were able to finish our review challenge a day early! In total, since our release in March 2020, we have completed over 3,000 pages and have had over 800 volunteers contributing to the campaign. We are so grateful to our volunteers for helping us achieve this incredible milestone.
In addition to our review challenge, we held a panel discussion with six of our seven remote interns called the Lunch & Learn Webinar: A Conversation with the Herencia Crowdsourcing Interns. In this event, as a program specialist and the interns’ co-supervisor, I moderated a panel discussion with our spring Herencia Crowdsourcing interns: Jake Neuberger, Aranza Obscura, Lourdes Johnson, Courtney Kennedy, Teresa Kane, and Emily Hausheer. This remarkable group of students, graduate students and industry professionals is the first cohort to ever conduct research on this digital collection. In this webinar, the interns shared their background, professional experiences, their interest in the Herencia campaign, and their incredible discoveries during their 10-week internship. Senior legal information specialist Stephen Mayeaux gave an overview of the progress on Herencia and what to expect from the campaign in the near future.
To learn more about Herencia, our interns, and their discoveries, check out the webinar recording below: