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Category: Crowdsourcing

Douglass Day 2024 promotional image of Douglass, with a dusty rose background.

An Outpouring of Love for Douglass Day 2024

Posted by: Carlyn Osborn

Today’s guest post is from Lauren Algee, a Senior Digital Collections Specialist in the Digital Content Management Section and a By the People community manager.** Douglass Day 2024 marked the busiest day in the history of By the People, the Library of Congress’s crowdsourced transcription program. The transcribe-a-thon for the Frederick Douglass Papers was groundbreaking …

Black and white campaign images for Susan B. Anthony Papers and the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers.

The crowdsourced transcription lifecycle – from conception to retirement

Posted by: Carlyn Osborn

Today’s guest post is from Lauren Algee, a Senior Collections Specialist in the Digital Content Management Section and a By the People community manager. After years of service from thousands of volunteers, some of the oldest completed By the People crowdsourced transcription campaigns are celebrating their retirement! This week, the By the People team retired 10 …

Dozens of squares, each with its own individual color or shade, lined up in rows and columns

Do volunteer transcriptions improve search and discovery in loc.gov?

Posted by: Tracee Haupt

Today’s guest post is from Abby Shelton, a Digital Collections Specialist and By the People Community Manager in the Digital Content Management Section at the Library of Congress. How do people use crowdsourced transcriptions? Do they drive increased traffic and engagement to our digital collections? What kinds of activity do transcriptions of handwritten documents facilitate? …

Dozens of squares, each with its own individual color or shade, lined up in rows and columns

Staff transcriber spotlight: Enjoy being curious!

Posted by: Carlyn Osborn

 In today’s post, Abby Shelton interviews a By the People contributor and recently retired Library of Congress staff member, Jan Lancaster, who has gone above and beyond! Jan transcribed and reviewed thousands of Clara Barton pages early in the pandemic as part of a telework project. In this post we asked Jan to reflect on her contributions …

Dozens of squares, each with its own individual color or shade, lined up in rows and columns

Volunteer Vignette: A group effort!

Posted by: Carlyn Osborn

In today’s guest post, Abby Shelton interviews a By the People volunteer, Kathleen, who has gone above and beyond! By the People is a crowdsourced transcription program launched in 2018 at the Library of Congress. Volunteer-created transcriptions are used to make digitized collections more accessible and discoverable on loc.gov. You can read our most recent Volunteer Vignette on the Signal here. Abby: What …

Dozens of squares, each with its own individual color or shade, lined up in rows and columns

Volunteer Vignette: It’s fun to figure out the puzzle!

Posted by: Carlyn Osborn

In today’s post, Abby Shelton interviews a By the People volunteer, Maya, who has gone above and beyond! By the People is a crowdsourced transcription program launched in 2018 at the Library of Congress. Volunteer-created transcriptions are used to make digitized collections more accessible and discoverable on loc.gov. You can read our most recent Volunteer Vignette on the Signal here. Abby: What motivates …

Dozens of squares, each with its own individual color or shade, lined up in rows and columns

‘By the People’ Turns 3: A Year in Review

Posted by: Carlyn Osborn

It’s that time again: another By the People anniversary! To celebrate the third birthday of crowd.loc.gov, we thought we would share some highlights from this past year. Interested in our previous anniversary posts? Check out our Year 1 and Year 2 celebrations on the Signal. As a quick recap, By the People (BtP) is a volunteer engagement and collection enhancement program at the Library of Congress that …

Dozens of squares, each with its own individual color or shade, lined up in rows and columns

Summer 2021 Volunteer Survey: What Motivates ‘By the People’ Volunteers?

Posted by: Carlyn Osborn

Today’s guest post is from Abby Shelton, a community manager for the By the People crowdsourced transcription program. Launched in 2018, By the People is a volunteer engagement and collection enhancement program at the Library of Congress that invites the public to explore and transcribe Library of Congress digital collections. When transcriptions are completed by …