Mark Your Place in History as a Citizen Archivist
Help make history make sense as part of the Revolutionary War Pension Files Transcription Mission
The National Archives welcomes volunteers to help interpret its vast collection of digitized historic documents. We're more and more convinced that machines can do the reading for us, but it's not really true, especially when the documents as seen above are written by people, by hand, in cursive, maybe with some quirky spelling or outright errors here and there. The Archives needs human eyes and brains to transcribe thousands of historic documents. This helps more people to find the records they're searching for in their research and makes those records easier to read for everyone.
There are two main tasks you can do as a Citizen Archivist:
You can add tags to materials in the National Archives' catalog to make them easy to find! Tags are a like a breadcrumb trail for different users to find resources that are relevant to each other's interests.
A guiding document from the National Archives explains the craft of tagging records. The tags shown are different markers that one user attached to the record for that the next user can search by to find this item. The National Archives provides lots of support to help you get the hang of the process. For one example, this video explains the process of tagging Revolutionary War pensions:
- You can also help to read and transcribe documents to make them accessible! Handwritten documents are hard for many to read, and transcription helps in two ways: it creates a digital document that can be reformatted or read for those with visual challenges; and it gives search engines something to look for, making a document easier to find with a keyword search.
In preparation for next year's 250th anniversary celebration of American Independence, the Archives is seeking volunteers to read and tag its digital collection of Revolutionary War documents.
The Revolutionary War Pension Files Transcription Mission invites you to look at payment records for Revolutionary War veterans. Some soldiers were paid pensions in currency, but the young nation was low on funds, so it issued Bounty Land Warrants to many soldiers that they could redeem for property after the war.
You can even "gamify" the work with a group of friends. The Archives has Revolutionary War-themed bingo cards that you can print out and compete within a team of taggers. Cover a space every time you find a mention of a certain topic.
The Archives breaks down its enormous collection of resources into Citizen Archivist Missions like this one. Explore court case files, presidential pardons and remissions, Japanese Relocation Center records, JFK assassination records and more! Check out the completed missions to see the project in action, with the help of people just like you. Click here to register as a Citizen Archivist and get started enriching our history.