The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum wants all armchair historians to volunteer for a special project they can do from home.
The library needs help transcribing 30,000 pages of historical documents.
Volunteers would get a look at the document, then type out what they see. Officials say the papers give unique insight into the day-to-day experience of living in Illinois during the Civil War.
Documents like these would ordinarily not be transcribed, leaving researchers to dig through them as they try to find something related to their topic. But in crowdsourcing the project, the library hopes to create a searchable database available to researchers around the world.
If you’re up for the challenge, visit ChroniclingIllinois.org and click on “Transcriptions.” That takes visitors to a page with links at the top and bottom to create an account. After you sign up, a confirmation will be sent to your email. Click on it and then go back to the Transcriptions page to select a document and begin.
Thanks to Beth Pieper for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.
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