The Library of Congress launched the By the People crowdsourced transcription program in 2018. Since then, we have invited anyone to volunteer by transcribing Library of Congress digital collections through our online platform, Concordia. Completed transcriptions go back into Library of Congress digital collections on loc.gov to make them keyword searchable and improve accessibility. We also publish transcriptions in bulk as open datasets. By the People transcription campaigns have always included typed and printed text – typed scouting reports of baseball great Branch Rickey were one of our first campaigns! Our team is asked often why we ask volunteers to transcribe print and typed collections instead of using OCR (Optical Character Recognition).
Editors’ Choice: Volunteers Leverage OCR to Transcribe Library of Congress Digital Collections
