Today’s guest post is from Lauren Algee, a Senior Digital Collections Specialist & By the People community manager at the Library of Congress.
On February 14, the Library of Congress transcription program By the People will celebrate the legacy of Frederick Douglass with a virtual transcribe-a-thon of rare books and manuscripts related to African American history. Volunteers will transcribe selected materials from the Rare Book and Special Collections Division and Manuscript Division, including the Daniel A. P. Murray Collection, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Records, Booker T. Washington Papers, and more.
Dr. Carla Hayden, the 14th Librarian of Congress, invites you all to be part of our Douglass Day celebration (transcript here):
Since 2018, By the People volunteers have transcribed Library of Congress digital collections at crowd.loc.gov. Completed transcriptions are published in the loc.gov digital collections to create page-level keyword search and improve accessibility of these pages.
This year marks the third By the People collaboration with Douglass Day, organized by the Center for Black Digital Research at Pennsylvania State University. Douglass Day is an annual celebration of and day of service to the legacy of Frederick Douglass. Since 2017, thousands of volunteers from around the world come together virtually on Frederick Douglass’ chosen birthday of February 14 to help transcribe and learn about an online collection highlighting Black history. In addition to the all-day virtual transcribe-a-thon, Douglass Day includes a livestreamed event with transcription tips and expert speakers. The 2025 Douglass Day theme “You Make History” highlights how we all contribute to preserving the stories of our past
Previous By the People Douglass Day transcribe-a-thons for the Mary Church Terrell campaign for Douglass Day 2021 and the Frederick Douglass Papers in 2024 have been successful. In fact, Douglass Day 2024 broke records for Library volunteer transcription –16,000 actions were taken by volunteer contributors on the By the People website that day.
We hope you’ll join us for another record breaking Douglass Day! Participate on February 14 by visiting crowd.loc.gov.