MSU Library
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A number of organizations have programs where they ask individuals to help improve access to documents, audio recordings, and videos by creating typed documents that record the contents of those items. This kind of work allows researchers access to data that might not be available just searching titles or key words.
Transcribing documents can be a great way to experience historical documents on topics you didn't think to explore!
If you would like to start transcribing, check out these websites. Every little bit of transcription work can make a difference. If you don't have time to transcribe an entire hand written text, you can start small. Add some subject tags to photographs, improve discovery by adding alt-text, or you can start transcribing a document and just get as far as you can, other transcribers can jump in and finish.
https://www.archives.gov/citizen-archivist
Register to join the Citizen Archivist Program to transcribe documents, tag photographs, and collaborate with other contributors. The National Archives keeps an ongoing list of active "Missions" which are collections they have identified as needing transcriptions.
Every system has their own preferred way to transcribe documents, and their own tips on how to find documents/resources. For the National Archives, check out their dedicated page to Get Started Transcribing.
No account is required to participate in the Library of Congress (LOC) By the People program. You are encouraged to create an account to track your progress and your edits, but it is not necessary to transcribe on their platform. In addition to transcription, they also look for volunteers to review the work of other volunteers as a second pass. The program has a list of "Campaigns" volunteers can choose from based on what interests them. Each year, one of their campaigns is the Douglass Day campaign around Frederick Douglass' birthday (February 14th).
The By the People transcription preferences can be found on the page Transcription: Basic Rules.
https://content.fromthepage.com/
Most archives are not large enough to create their own platforms for transcription. FromThePage is a platform that organizations can use to reach volunteer transcribers in their community and beyond. They also have a great resource on their blog titled "How Do I Read Old Handwriting?."
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Frederick Douglass was an American author, orator, and civil rights champion whose February 14th birthday helped give rise to Black History Month. Since 2018, the By the People platform has hosted a transcribe-a-thon in his honor. The transcription, focused on collections highlighting Black History, is part of a national celebration that participants can join from across the country and around the world.
For more information about the history of Douglass Day, visit DouglassDay.org or check out the article the article "The Origins of Douglass Day" published by the Smithsonian in 2023.
In 2025, MSU Library began participating in this annual event. Watch the library events page for updates on each year's event.
Reading handwritten text can be a challenge for even experienced researchers. Whether in print or cursive, handwriting can vary significantly. Here are a few tips and tools that can be useful when reading (and transcribing) hand written documents.
If you are working from a physical (one of a kind) document, make a copy that you can write on. For documents with tight, or smaller print you may enlarge the text before you print it out. Now you can write the transcription directly on the copy. Not sure your handwriting will be any clearer? You can also paste images of the text into a document so you can type text above the images to track what you do and don't know.
For even the messiest handwriting, some words will be relatively clear. That may be the date at the top of the page, the signature line (if you know who wrote the document), or other words that repeat regularly. Using the "Make a copy" tip above, identify those words (by writing or typing them out), leaving the words you don't know blank. Once you get a little more context about the document, missing words may become more obvious.
The more you read, the more familiar you will become with how the writer formed different letters, so that context may also make some words easier to identify.
Unless otherwise noted the content on this LibGuide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.