
A Revolutionary War pension and bounty land warrant application submitted by James Lambert
National Archives
The National Archives is brimming with historical documents written in cursive, including some that date back more than 200 years. But these texts can be difficult to read and understand— particularly for Americans who never learned cursive in school.
That’s why the National Archives is looking for volunteers who can help transcribe and organize its many handwritten records: The goal of the Citizen Archivist program is to help “unlock history” by making digital documents more accessible, according to the project’s website.
Every year, the National Archives digitizes tens of millions of records. The agency uses artificial intelligence and a technology known as optical character recognition to extract text from historical documents. But these methods don’t always work, and they aren’t always accurate.
That’s where human volunteers come in. By transcribing digital pages, volunteers make it easier for scholars, genealogists and curious history buffs to find and read historical documents.
Getting started is easy: All you need to do is sign up online. The free program is open to anyone with an internet connection.
“There’s no application,” Suzanne Isaacs, a community manager with the National Archives, tells USA Today’s Elizabeth Weise. “You just pick a record that hasn’t been done and read the instructions. It’s easy to do for a half hour a day or a week.”
If you’re not confident in your cursive deciphering skills, the National Archives has other tasks available, too—such as “tagging” documents that other volunteers have already transcribed. Tagging helps improve the searchability of records.
Already, more than 5,000 volunteers have joined the Citizen Archivist program. Many are hard at work on “missions,” or groups of documents that need transcribing and tagging. For example, current missions include Revolutionary War pension files and employee contracts from 1866 to 1870.
The Revolutionary W