Transcribe Civil War Documents for Smithsonian

[BridgeTroll]

I do this this for a WWI site transcribing battle reports... It can be very interesting as often you are the first person to read these documents since they were originally created and processed...

http://www.livescience.com/47342-smithsonian-transcribing-historical-documents.html

History 2.0: Civil War Journals & Historic Letters Go Digital

Laura Geggel, Staff Writer   |   August 13, 2014 04:08pm ET

Armchair historians with a knack for reading scratchy handwriting can now help the Smithsonian Institution with a giant effort to preserve thousands of historical letters and journals online.

The newly launched Transcription Center invites the public to read and digitally transcribe documents ranging from Civil War journals to notes on bumblebee specimens to letters from famous artists, such as Mary Cassatt and Grandma Moses.

"We are thrilled to invite the public to be our partners in the creation of knowledge to help open our resources for professional and casual researchers to make new discoveries," Smithsonian Secretary G. Wayne Clough said in a statement. "For years, the vast resources of the Smithsonian were powered by the pen; they can now be powered by the pixel."

Once the documents are transcribed online, anyone with a historical penchant or research goal will be able to access them on the Smithsonian's website.

The Smithsonian has thousands of handwritten texts that cannot be decoded by computers. Only careful transcription by human volunteers can make these notes readable and searchable online, experts said.

This past year, the Smithsonian demonstrated the power of such crowdsourcing, when nearly 1,000 volunteers helped the Transcription Center tackle more than 13,000 pages of transcription. Among the historical documents that were digitized were field reports written by one of the Monuments Men who rescued artwork during World War II. Once a document is transcribed and uploaded online, another volunteer reviews the words and a Smithsonian expert certifies it.

Another project from this beta-test phase included the digitization of notes on almost 45,000 bumblebee specimens. Each note had information about the bees and the date and location of their collection, according to Smithsonian representatives. Researchers interested in studying the rapid decline of bees over the past few decades can access this information online, which may help them understand the bees' population history and decline.

Within two weeks, volunteers had also typed up the 121-page diary of Earl Shaffer, the first documented man to walk the Appalachian Trail. Hikers, naturalists and researchers can now read the journal online without handling its delicate pages.

Volunteers interested in joining the Transcription Center project can register online and browse a range of texts on art, history, culture and science.

Register here...

https://transcription.si.edu/user/register

Here is the WWI submission...

http://www.metrojacksonville.com/forum/index.php/topic,20612.0.html

[Dog Walker]

I did something similar for the Gutenburg Project several years back by correcting and entering pages that the optical character readers couldn't handle.  It's quite interesting if you have the time.  Quite a time trip.

[BridgeTroll]

I did something similar for the Gutenburg Project several years back by correcting and entering pages that the optical character readers couldn't handle.  It's quite interesting if you have the time.  Quite a time trip.

The OCR programs just dont work very well with hand written often cursive documents.  The WWI project I have worked on are daily official diaries of individual units.  Every day, hour by hour, entries were handwritten describing food, billeting, war action, casualties, transfers, who went on leave and where... basically everything that happened during the day.  I imagine this Civil War project is very much the same...