Smithsonian Transcription Center

Smithsonian Transcription Center
Name	Smithsonian Transcription Center
Caption	Volunteers transcribing manuscripts at the Transcription Center
Formed	2013
Type	Digital crowdsourcing project
Headquarters	Washington, D.C.
Parent organization	Smithsonian Institution

Contents

Smithsonian Transcription Center is a crowdsourcing initiative of the Smithsonian Institution that engages volunteers worldwide to transcribe handwritten and printed materials from the Institution's museums, archives, and libraries. The project supports research across fields represented by collections such as the National Museum of Natural History, National Air and Space Museum, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Libraries and Archives, and the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. It connects volunteers to primary sources linked to figures and events like Rachel Carson, Frederick Douglass, Sally Ride, Robert Fulton, and Theodore Roosevelt.

History

The Transcription Center was launched by the Smithsonian Institution in 2013 following precedents in crowdsourced projects such as NASA’s citizen science platforms, the Biodiversity Heritage Library’s transcription efforts, and the Zooniverse projects tied to institutions like the British Museum and the Natural History Museum, London. Early campaigns digitized materials from collections associated with Joseph Henry, Alexander Graham Bell, Martha Graham, James McNeill Whistler, and the Civil War correspondences tied to figures like Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee. Over time the Center expanded to include materials linked to movements and events such as the Women’s Suffrage movement, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the Manhattan Project, and the Apollo 11 archives.

The Center’s mission aligns with the Smithsonian Institution’s mandates to increase access to collections through digitization initiatives similar to those of the Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, and international partners like the Victoria and Albert Museum. Goals include improving discoverability for objects associated with individuals such as John James Audubon, Florence Nightingale, Ansel Adams, and Eugene Delacroix, enabling scholarship on topics connected to the Transcontinental Railroad, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Industrial Revolution. The program explicitly aims to support research by scholars who use sources related to Charles Darwin, Thomas Edison, Marie Curie, and Ada Lovelace.

Collections hosted for transcription have included field notebooks and specimen labels from the National Museum of Natural History tied to collectors like William Henry Huntington and Alexander von Humboldt, ship logs related to USS Constitution voyages, architectural plans connected to Frank Lloyd Wright, and correspondence from cultural figures such as Isamu Noguchi and Langston Hughes. The Center has also solicited transcriptions for scientific archives connected to Rachel Carson’s research, engineering manuscripts of Nikola Tesla, and expedition records from explorers like Roald Amundsen and Ernest Shackleton. Special campaigns have focused on themes like World War I diaries, Dust Bowl photographs, and oral history transcripts associated with the Smithsonian Folklife Festival.

Volunteer contributors include hobbyists, students, genealogists, and professionals connected to institutions like George Washington University, Howard University, Yale University, and the University of Cambridge. Community engagement strategies mirror practices used by projects at Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern, and the Field Museum, fostering networks that include family historians researching names like Dolley Madison or Alexander Hamilton, scholars of figures such as Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, and veterans documenting service tied to World War II and Vietnam War. Partnerships with organizations like the Daughters of the American Revolution and the National Genealogical Society have broadened participation and outreach.

The Center uses a web-based transcription platform interoperable with digitization standards employed by the Library of Congress, Digital Public Library of America, and Europeana. Workflow integrates image viewers, text editors, and review queues inspired by platforms used in projects like Zooniverse and the Transcribe Bentham project at University College London. Metadata practices align with schemas promoted by the Dublin Core community and the Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard, facilitating cross-repository linkage to catalog records in the Smithsonian Institution Research Information System. Quality control combines volunteer review, expert validation from curators at institutions such as the National Portrait Gallery and the Cooper Hewitt, and automated text-processing tools similar to Optical Character Recognition refinements used by the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Transcriptions have improved access to materials used in scholarship on figures like Lewis Carroll, Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Charlotte Brontë, and Herman Melville, and have supported exhibits at venues such as the National Museum of American History and touring shows organized with the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service. Research enabled by the Center has informed publications on topics related to the Abolitionist Movement, the Progressive Era, and scientific histories involving Alfred Russel Wallace and George Washington Carver. Notable outcomes include discovery of marginalia in manuscripts linked to Thomas Jefferson, corrected specimen identifications benefiting collections at the National Museum of Natural History, and digitized datasets incorporated into projects with partners like the National Science Foundation and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Category:Smithsonian Institution Category:Crowdsourcing Category:Digital archives