ABOUT MAKING HISTORY

About

About this Project

In 2014, the Library of Virginia introduced Making History: Transcribe; a collaborative online workspace focused on transcribing documents in the Library’s collections. During the past eight years, our crowdsourced approach has resulted in over 122,000 pages of transcriptions. Each transcribed page makes it possible for that particular archival item to be found through full-text searching and to be read by those who, for a variety of reasons, cannot decipher the handwritten version. Through our bimonthly Transcribe-a-thons, we have connected and worked with many wonderful volunteers on collections ranging from correspondence, to Chancery Court cases, to the papers of the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia.

While the last eight years have been productive for Making History:Transcribe as a project and community, time has not been as kind to the technology we use behind-the-scenes. The Library of Virginia was one of the first institutions to offer a transcription program and, in the years since, many advances have been made by newer members in the field. As the official archives for the Commonwealth of Virginia, we hold many government records that are organized as forms or spreadsheets - formats that our current system cannot handle. Advances in transcription software now allow for greater flexibility, accommodating both highly structured forms as well as more free-form text. Newer software options also provide easier account systems and more user-friendly transcription interfaces.

For these reasons we have decided to upgrade our transcription platform by partnering with From The Page (fromthepage.com), a transcription software used by many other cultural institutions. For the last few years, we have been using From The Page for relevant collections such as our World War I Questionnaires but we hope to transfer all our transcription projects to the new platform by April 4, 2022. Volunteers are invited to create their own accounts on FromThePage, if they have not already, and begin working on the collections that can be found at fromthepage.com/lva. For more hands-on instruction on the platform, sign up for one of our bimonthly Transcribe-a-thons hosted both virtually and in-person at the Library of Virginia. We look forward to continuing our collaboration with the public to transcribe historical Virginia documents, now with even better technology!

Making History: Transcribe is funded in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services and Dominion Virginia Power.

The Virginia Untold project is made possible through a National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) grant. NHPRC provides advice and recommendations for the National Archives grants program.

Volunteer Hours

Volunteers may earn community service hours by helping transcribe and index the Library of Virginia collections on From the Page. Please be sure to log into From The Page the site each time you transcribe. Transcription work completed while not logged into your account can not be counted toward your volunteer time. Though From the Page hosts collections from many different libraries and archives, only work on the Library of Virginia collections can be counted toward your volunteer time. Saving frequently (every 10-15 min.) while transcribing helps demonstrate continued activity and reduces the chance of lost work. The From the Page account system records active minutes on their site by each user for each day. The daily active minutes for a user can be exported to create a timesheet.

Please note that Virginia Chronicle does not have time-tracking capabilities within its account system. Time spent doing text correction on Virginia Chronicle can only count towards volunteer hours if it is supervised as part of our HandsOn volunteer sessions.

To request your timesheet or volunteer letter, email makinghistory@virginiamemory.com, allowing at least 2-3 business days (M-F, 9-5) for completion, and specify any recipients. Please be sure to check in advance that online volunteering will be accepted.

Community

Want to chat with archivists, historians, transcribers, and students about the Library of Virginia crowdsourcing projects? Find us all on the LVA Transcribe Slack Workspace. If you have not used Slack before, this online service allows us to create message boards for specific topics where we share updates and information. If you post a question, it may be answered by an LVA staff member or another transcriber, many of whom have worked on these projects for years.

Staff

Contact the Making History team at makinghistory@virginiamemory.com

Many additional staff members at the Library contribute to our crowdsourcing projects through their ongoing work of processing, cataloging, digitization, and reviewing transcriptions submitted by the public.