By the People is a Library of Congress venture that I’ve written about and featured in my Teaching History With Technology programs since 2018. On By the People academics and college students can contribute to crowd-sourcing transcriptions of hundreds of main supply paperwork. Some of the collections that I’ve featured over time have been campaigns to transcribe collections of paperwork written by troopers within the American Civil War, the journals of Walt Whitman, and letters written by James Garfield.
This week the Library of Congress introduced some new options of the By the People web site. The most important of these options is an up to date picture viewer. The picture viewer now contains filters that can be utilized to assist folks extra carefully analyze the main points of main supply paperwork housed in By the People collections that also have to be transcribed. Some different new options embody up to date profile pages for registered contributors and simpler identification of paperwork that also have to be transcribed.
Applications for Education
For years I’ve beneficial utilizing By the People as a method to get highschool college students to dive into main sources to study concerning the folks and occasions featured within the collections whereas additionally studying concerning the significance of precisely transcribing main sources. The LOC now has a web page of sources for academics who want to have their college students take part in transcribe-a-thon occasions that make the most of the By the People collections.