SUBSCRIBE
SUBSCRIBE
EXPLORE +
  • About infoDOCKET
  • Academic Libraries on LJ
  • Research on LJ
  • News on LJ
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Libraries
    • Academic Libraries
    • Government Libraries
    • National Libraries
    • Public Libraries
  • Companies (Publishers/Vendors)
    • EBSCO
    • Elsevier
    • Ex Libris
    • Frontiers
    • Gale
    • PLOS
    • Scholastic
  • New Resources
    • Dashboards
    • Data Files
    • Digital Collections
    • Digital Preservation
    • Interactive Tools
    • Maps
    • Other
    • Podcasts
    • Productivity
  • New Research
    • Conference Presentations
    • Journal Articles
    • Lecture
    • New Issue
    • Reports
  • Topics
    • Archives & Special Collections
    • Associations & Organizations
    • Awards
    • Funding
    • Interviews
    • Jobs
    • Management & Leadership
    • News
    • Patrons & Users
    • Preservation
    • Profiles
    • Publishing
    • Roundup
    • Scholarly Communications
      • Open Access

October 24, 2018 by Gary Price

Transcribing Text: Library of Congress Launches Crowdsourcing Program to Aid in Discovery of Materials; Crowdsourcing Software Released as Open Source

October 24, 2018 by Gary Price

From LC:

The Library of Congress today launched crowd.loc.gov, a crowdsourcing program that will connect the Library with virtual volunteers to transcribe text in digitized images from the Library’s historic collections.
[Clip]
Volunteers can work on selections from the papers of Abraham Lincoln and Mary Church Terrell, Clara Barton’s diaries, Branch Rickey’s baseball scouting reports or memoirs of Civil War veterans with disabilities from the William Oland Bourne Papers.
“Crowdsourcing demonstrates the passion of volunteers for history, learning and the power of technology to make those things more accessible,” said Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden. “The pages awaiting transcription at crowd.loc.gov represent some of the diversity of the Library’s treasure, and the metadata that will result from these transcriptions mean these digitized documents will have even greater use to classrooms, researchers or anyone who is curious about these historical figures.”
2018-10-24_10-44-06
The transcripts developed and reviewed by volunteers will be made available on the Library’s website, loc.gov, making them keyword searchable for the first time. This will enhance access to handwritten and typed documents that computers cannot accurately extract text from.
Users will also benefit from greater on-screen readability and compatibility with screen readers used by people with visual disabilities.
“Earlier this month, the Library released its first digital strategy, an ambitious vision to throw open our treasure chest, connect with users and invest in our future. Crowd.loc.gov is an enormous leap forward in connecting with all Americans by welcoming their contributions to their Library,” said Kate Zwaard, the Library’s director of digital strategy. “We are especially excited about this tool’s potential to serve the curious – people who want to learn something interesting and unexpected.”
The Library will continue to add new material, including documents from the Rosa Parks papers, the woman’s suffrage movement, Civil War veterans, American poets and the history of psychiatry.
Challenge
Crowd.loc.gov will launch with the Letters to Lincoln Challenge, inviting the public to transcribe 10,000 digital images from the Abraham Lincoln papers by the end of 2018.
Open Sourced
The software powering the crowdsourcing program has been released by the Library as open source for the benefit and use of other cultural heritage organizations considering similar efforts. View or contribute to the code repository at github.com/LibraryOfCongress/concordia.

Read the Complete Announcement
Direct to Crowd.Loc.gov
See Also: More Crowdsourcing: American Archive of Public Broadcasting (From LC and WGBH) Crowdsourcing Project
See Page 12 of PDF.
Other Libraries (A Few of Many Examples)
Learn About Crowdsourcing Projects at The British Library, Library and Archives Canada, and National Library of Australia
Background 
See Also: Transcription and Tagging: The Library of Congress Will Launch Crowdsourcing Program Next Week (October 17, 2018)
See Also: Library of Congress Labs Goes Live, a “Place to Encourage Innovation with LC Digital Collections” (September 17, 2018)
See Also: Journal Article: Crowdsourcing: How and Why Should Libraries Do It? (2010)
 
 

Filed under: Archives and Special Collections, Associations and Organizations, Journal Articles, Libraries, National Libraries, News, Open Access, Patrons and Users, Reports

SHARE:

About Gary Price

Gary Price (gprice@mediasourceinc.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. Before launching INFOdocket, Price and Shirl Kennedy were the founders and senior editors at ResourceShelf and DocuTicker for 10 years. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com, and is currently a contributing editor at Search Engine Land.

ADVERTISEMENT

Archives

Job Zone

ADVERTISEMENT

Recent Articles on LJ

How Ted Lasso Changed My Librarianship | Backtalk

Dartmouth Repatriates Samson Occom Papers to Mohegan Tribe

DEI Audits: The Whole Picture | Equity

Proud Boys Disrupt Drag Queen Story Time at San Lorenzo Library

After the MLIS

ADVERTISEMENT

Related Infodocket Posts

Julie Mosbo Ballestro Appointed University Librarian at Texas A&M University

Full Text of a Texas A&M University Libraries Announcement: We are pleased to announce the appointment of Julie Mosbo Ballestro as University Librarian and Assistant Provost of University Libraries at ...

New Report From EBLIDA: "First European Overview on E-Lending in Public Libraries"

From an EBLIDA (European Bureau of Library, Information and Documentation Associations) Post: EBLIDA is laying the foundation for “sustainable copyright” in public libraries through the publication of the “First European ...

New Video Recording From Rare Book School: "Making and Reading Indigenous Archives"

The Rare Book School (U. of Virginia) video embedded below (a National Endowment for the Humanities-Global Book Histories Initiative Lecture by Kelly Wisecup) was recorded on June 15, 2022. From ...

New Funding: Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) Awarded $850,000 by Mellon Foundation to Support the Advancement of...

From a DPLA Announcement: Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is pleased to announce an $850,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation to support its effort to advance racial justice in ...

Roundup (June 27, 2022)

Coherent Digital Launches South Asia Archive on the Coherent Commons Platform The Longest-Running Queer News Radio Show Is Headed to the Library of Congress (via NPR) University of Cambridge Now ...

Report: "The Important Role Libraries Play in Building a Creative and Innovative Society"

From ArchDaily: As gateways to knowledge and culture, libraries play a fundamental role in society. Foundational in creating opportunities for learning, as well as supporting literacy and education, the resources ...

Not Real News: An Associated Press Roundup of Untrue Stories Shared Widely on Social Media This Week

From the Associated Press: A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were ...

Statement: American Library Association (ALA) Condemns Threats of Violence in Libraries

Full Text of ALA Statement (6/24): In response to the alarming increase in acts of aggression toward library workers and patrons as reported by press across the country, the American ...

Roundup (June 24, 2022)

FCC and IMLS Sign Agreement to Promote Broadband Access Library Impact Research Report: Impact of Archival Collections and Services on the Western University Department of History (via ARL) More Than ...

Report: "Vatican Releases Thousands of Holocaust-Era Letters and Requests Online"

From the Associated Press (via Times of Israel): Pope Francis orders the online publication of 170 volumes of its Jewish files from the recently opened Pope Pius XII archives, the ...

The New York Public Library Opens a ‘Virtual Branch’ on Instagram and Launches a Reading Recommendation Project Using...

From NYPL: The virtual branch— a custom designed interactive AR (Augmented Reality) Effect accessible via Instagram Reels is the centerpiece of #NYPLSummerBookshelf, a new initiative to spark a love of ...

Roundup (June 23, 2022)

CLIR Invites Proposals for Pocket Burgundy Series (via Council on Library and Information Resources) Oregon’s State Library added to National Register of Historic Places (via Oregon Capital Chronicle)

ADVERTISEMENT

FOLLOW INFODOCKET ON TWITTER

Tweets by @infodocket

ADVERTISEMENT

This coverage is free for all visitors. Your support makes this possible.

This coverage is free for all visitors. Your support makes this possible.

Primary Sidebar

  • News
  • Reviews+
  • Technology
  • Programs+
  • Design
  • Leadership
  • People
  • COVID-19
  • Advocacy
  • Opinion
  • INFOdocket
  • Job Zone

Reviews+

  • Booklists
  • Prepub Alert
  • Book Pulse
  • Media
  • Readers' Advisory
  • Self-Published Books
  • Review Submissions
  • Review for LJ

Awards

  • Library of the Year
  • Librarian of the Year
  • Movers & Shakers 2022
  • Paralibrarian of the Year
  • Best Small Library
  • Marketer of the Year
  • All Awards Guidelines
  • Community Impact Prize

Resources

  • LJ Index/Star Libraries
  • Research
  • White Papers / Case Studies

Events & PD

  • Online Courses
  • In-Person Events
  • Virtual Events
  • Webcasts
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Advertise
  • Subscribe
  • Media Inquiries
  • Newsletter Sign Up
  • Submit Features/News
  • Data Privacy
  • Terms of Use
  • Terms of Sale
  • FAQs
  • Careers at MSI


© 2022 Library Journal. All rights reserved.


© 2022 Library Journal. All rights reserved.