You are subscribed to Crowdsourcing at the Library of Congress from the Library of Congress.

By the People Bulletin

 

New Whitman blog post 

Enjoying our latest addition to the Whitman campaign? Read more about it in the latest blog post by Barbara Bair from the Manuscript Division. She covers the wide variety of materials contained in the addition and highlights a few fascinating examples. Once you've finished the post, jump back into the campaign to help make these pages more accessible to all! 

Helpful tips for Whitman campaign - signatures and OCR 

We thought we'd remind you of a few helpful tips that might come in handy when transcribing the new Whitman addition. First, you'll find many signatures in the correspondence portions of this campaign. Sometimes they're hard to read! Here are some things to try. 

• Look at the item title to see if the writer's name is included. 
• Compare the signature to the names in the letterhead, often found on the first page of a letter. 
• Flip forward or backward to see if there's another page that includes a clearer spelling of the name.
• Use a search engine to look up parts of the signature with other keywords, like date, place, or recipient's name. 

There are also a good number of printed and typed items in the addition. Try out the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) button if a page looks like it would be a good candidate for automated text recognition (ie. clearly printed or typed, text arranged in standard format). If you are a registered user, you can find the OCR button underneath the image viewer. Make sure to carefully review and edit the OCR text before submitting the transcription. Using the OCR tool can help you fly through the journal articles, papers, and other printed materials found in the Whitman campaign. Review our How-To Guides to pick up additional tips and tricks for transcription.

By the People at American Library Association conference

By the People Community Managers Abby and Lauren will be at the Library of Congress exhibit booth during the American Library Association conference in Philadelphia from June 27-30. If you'll be at the conference, stop by the Library's booth to say hello and grab one of our new stickers. 

Happy transcribing!

Abby, Carlyn, and Lauren