{"version":"1.0","type":"card","id":"b2c09d2c-2371-453f-a4aa-26adbdc56ed1","url":"https://stacklist.com/card/b2c09d2c-2371-453f-a4aa-26adbdc56ed1","title":"Citizen Archivists | National Archives","source_url":"https://www.archives.gov/citizen-archivist/get-started-transcribing","note":"The National Archives is looking for volunteers with an increasingly rare skill: Reading cursive.\n\nMore than 200 years worth of U.S. documents need transcribing (or at least classifying) and the vast majority from the Revolutionary War era are handwritten in cursive – requiring people who know the flowing, looped form of penmanship.\n\n“Reading cursive is a superpower,” said Suzanne Isaacs, a community manager with the National Archives Catalog in Washington, D.C.\n\nShe is part of the team that coordinates the more than 5,000 Citizen Archivists helping the Archive read and transcribe some of the more than 300 million digitized objects in its catalog. And they're looking for volunteers with an increasingly rare skill.\n\nThose records range from Revolutionary War pension records to the field notes of Charles Mason of the Mason-Dixon Line to immigration documents from the 1890s to Japanese evacuation records to the 1950 Census.\n\nAn application for a Revolutionary War Pension by Innit Hollister, written in August of 1832. The National Archives uses Citizen Archivists who volunteer to help transcribe such materials. The ability to read cursive handwriting is helpful but not essential.\n“We create missions where we ask volunteers to help us transcribe or tag records in our catalog,” Isaacs said.\n\nTo volunteer, all that’s required is to sign up online and then launch in. “There's no application,” she said. “You just pick a record that hasn't been done and read the instructions. It's easy to do for a half hour a day or a week.”\n","image":{"url":"https://ucarecdn.com/7333b52b-0af7-4eab-8af9-b0ab3f959c11/-/crop/600x601/0,4/-/preview/","alt":"Citizen Archivists | National Archives","width":1200,"height":630},"stack":{"id":"e9d0bdcb-f501-488c-beab-43e48327940a","title":"Volunteering from Home","url":"https://stacklist.com/stack/e9d0bdcb-f501-488c-beab-43e48327940a"},"created_at":"2025-01-16T13:22:51.786Z","updated_at":null,"aco":{"summary":"This website provides instructions on how to transcribe records in the National Archives Catalog as a Citizen Archivist. It covers registration, finding records to transcribe, step-by-step transcription instructions, tips for transcribing, and resources for further assistance. \n","tags":[],"key_entities":[],"classification":null,"language":null,"confidence":null,"provenance":null,"token_counts":{"approximate":81},"content_hash":null,"acp_version":"0.2","body_available":false,"body_tokens":0,"visibility":"public","agent_accessible":true,"status":"final"},"_links":{"self":"/api/public/card/b2c09d2c-2371-453f-a4aa-26adbdc56ed1.json","html":"https://stacklist.com/card/b2c09d2c-2371-453f-a4aa-26adbdc56ed1","md":"/api/public/card/b2c09d2c-2371-453f-a4aa-26adbdc56ed1.md","stack_json":"/api/public/stack/e9d0bdcb-f501-488c-beab-43e48327940a.json"}}