Apr

Transcription Explosion

Jon Tanon offers a Volunteer Appreciation Month “thank you” to the Smithsonian Transcription Center

Even though the pandemic has presented challenges for the Smithsonian community, volunteers have found new means of connecting with us and giving their time and skills. Digital volunteering has never been as popular as it is now around the world. That is especially true with the Smithsonian Transcription Center (TC); it has seen an amazing increase of digital volunteers during the past year.

Considering this, I met with Caitlin Haynes, Program Coordinator for the Smithsonian Transcription Center. I hoped to learn how volunteering at TC grew during the past year. I also wanted to delve into the program’s history, participation, and engagement, both before and during the pandemic. Lastly, I was interested in what the future of TC will look like when everything gets back to (a new) normal.

The Transcription Center was created in 2013 through the Smithsonian Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) and is a crowd sourcing digital platform. The program brings together digitized historical collections across the Smithsonian Institution – from the different libraries, archives and museum departments – and invites the public to volunteer by helping to transcribe and revise the material to make it more readable, accessible, and keyword searchable across the Institution’s online database and major search engines.

The Transcription Center has always had successful volunteer engagement thanks to the diversity of the content being offered and the variety of support. It has launched materials from all kinds of topics, from letters, diaries, and scientific field notes, to audio sound recordings and scientific specimen labels. TC has completed projects in 26 different languages and from documents dating as far back as the 1600s.

Caitlin stated that the Transcription Center is successful because they offer an opportunity to anyone who is interested in exploring the Smithsonian collections, in a personal way, while in the comfort of their home. Volunteering with the Transcription Center requires no minimum participation, so volunteers can sign up and volunteer a single time, if they choose.

Screenshot of Transcription Center homepage — The Smithsonian Transcription Center’s home page.

Prior to the pandemic, TC had about 14,000 digital volunteers who were actively transcribing and reviewing projects. As of March 25, 2021, the program surpassed 46,000 active digital volunteers – this is more than 30,000 new volunteer transcribers in just over a year! In addition to the explosion of volunteer participation, TC has also experienced a change in the types of volunteers that are signing up, including a large increase of high school and college students, as well as, school teachers. Caitlin has seen an increase of national and international organizations, too, looking for opportunities for their staff to come together to give back to their communities, citing that TC is something that is educational and fun.

Caitlin at podium in front of presentation screen — Caitlin Haynes giving a training presentation for Transcription Center “volunpeers.” (Photo courtesy Caitlin Haynes)

This surge of new volunteers has really helped the Transcription Center accomplish many projects that wouldn’t have been able to be done before the pandemic. For example, it took TC six years, from 2013 to 2019, to transcribe its first 500,000 pages. By the end of 2021, in just two additional years, it is predicted that the program will reach 900,000 pages.

A year after the Smithsonian’s initial closures, the Transcription Center staff is taking time to hear from volunteers about their experiences, and thinking about different opportunities and ways to shape engagement moving forward. The staff goal is to make the digital volunteer experience as rewarding as the on-site volunteer experience.

Screenshot of confirmation from Transcription Center — Screenshot of a transcription confirmation.

Without a doubt, the volunteer work at the Transcription Center is paramount. Their work makes the Smithsonian more accessible and helps researchers and educators from everywhere engage with the collection in a personal way.

If you are interested in volunteering with the Smithsonian Transcription Center, you can find information through the website at https://transcription.si.edu/.