When Crowdsourced History Takes Its Bow and Joins the Digital Stage
Transcriptions crafted by thousands of volunteers don’t just live forever on the same website—they graduate. After years of careful typing and reviewing, completed By the People campaigns are now moving from their original home to the Library of Congress’s main digital collections.
Here’s how the journey unfolds: Library staff select and digitize historic texts, then volunteers transcribe and review them, page by page, until consensus is reached. Each campaign’s progress depends on the material’s complexity and volunteer enthusiasm—some wrap up in days, others in years. Once finished, the transcriptions are checked, formatted, and published on loc.gov, where they become searchable and accessible to all.
Retiring these campaigns from the By the People site isn’t a farewell—it’s a promotion. Their words now sit alongside the nation’s treasures, searchable and preserved, while the volunteer effort is forever acknowledged. In the digital world, even retirements can mean a new beginning.
#DigitalHeritage #Crowdsourcing #LibraryOfCongress #Culture
