From NextGov:
The National Archives and Records Administration plans to launch in December an online Citizen Archivist Dashboard through which volunteers can tag, transcribe and write articles about scanned NARA documents, said Pamela Wright, the agency’s chief digital access strategist.
NARA initially will put up about 300 documents for transcription, Wright said Friday before a panel discussion on social media in government. Those documents will be coded green, yellow and red based on their length and how difficult it is to decipher the handwriting, she said.
The transcription page will include a simple interface with the original document on one screen and the transcribed version on another, she said, plus a magnifying glass feature for a closer look at obscured words.
The dashboard also will include a link for volunteers to tag words and images in the Archives’ massive collection of scanned images, she said, making the documents more easily searchable.
The Archives launched the tagging feature inside its digital collection and Flickr page this summer and already has gotten several thousand tags, Wright said.
See Also: Slides from Pamela Wright’s Presentation, “From Access to Engagement” (14 slides; PDF)
A look at the Citizen Archivist Dashboard.
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