Read Unpublished Poems by Walt Whitman While Helping Transcribe Recordings for the Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is a great place to find everything from free movies and books to free access to epic images of cats .
One of the key steps to getting all this great content online: it needs to be digitized. When it comes to old letters and letters, this means they also need to be digitized by hand.
The Library of Congress was opened by the People in 2018 to allow the general public to help with some of these transcripts. You are not paid in cash, but it does give you the opportunity to see a number of historical documents that you might not otherwise be able to see.
The transcription will help improve search so that people can find documents more easily in the future. IT will also help make these documents available to the visually impaired or anyone who might have trouble reading the original handwriting in the document (raises hand).
And there are some pretty cool stuff that can be deciphered. Right now, for example, the site is asking for help in deciphering documents from the women’s suffrage movement, as well as old poems and writings by Walt Whitman.
For decryption, you can simply go to the site, choose what you want to work on, and go. If you sign up for an account, you will also be able to access additional features such as adding tags and the ability to view other people’s transcriptions. Yes, transcriptions are checked for accuracy before being uploaded to the Library of Congress.
If you’re looking to kill some time, this can be a fun way to look back and help people find the same documents in the future.