Baseball History: LC’s Branch Rickey Crowdsourcing Project Completed; 1,926 Pages of Rickey’s Scouting Reports Transcribed and Available to Keyword Search

From LC:

Just four months after the Library partnered with the public to transcribe the papers of baseball icon Branch Rickey, volunteers have transcribed all 1,926 pages of Rickey’s scouting reports, making them available for digital research just in time for Major League Baseball’s opening day.

These community-created transcriptions allow for keyword search and on-line scholarship, opening new avenues for baseball fans and researchers.

The completed data is also available as a bulk download from LC Labs. Our volunteers showed amazing hustle in finishing so quickly. Their work now makes it possible for data research, including text analysis (what Rickey’s reports tended to say),  the mentions of specific locations, player names and a chronology of the era. Analyzing the texts as data can also reveal patterns and prompt new questions. We offer a respectful tip of the cap to our volunteers.

No one encapsulates baseball’s history quite like Rickey (1881–1965), a former player and manager who became an innovative baseball executive and part-owner over a career spanning nearly 60 years.

Read the Complete Post

Transcribing Text: Library of Congress Launches Crowdsourcing Program to Aid in Discovery of Materials; Crowdsourcing Software Released as Open Source (October 2018)

See Also:  Major League Baseball: Library of Congress Posts Digitized Copies of 1,750 Player Scouting Reports Written by the Legendary Branch Rickey, Reports About Many Baseball Hall of Famers Included in Collection (April 2018)

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