Today we bring you the first of several spotlights on a different sort of Scripto user. Before, we have featured individual transcribers who have devoted time to transcribing War Department documents. Here, though, we feature an institution that has implemented their own verison of the Scripto tool to power their own transcription project. The project is called DIY History, and is brought to us by the University of Iowa Libraries.

We recently sat down with two of the folks responsible for DIY History: Shawn Averkamp, Data Services Librarian; and Jennifer Wolfe, Metadata Librarian, to talk about DIY History, Scripto, and crowdsourcing.

How did you get started using Scripto?

Shawn Averkamp: “Well, it really began with the Civil War Diaries and Letters Transcription Project. Within eighteen months, volunteer contributors transcribed something like 15,000 pages. So with the diaries and letters nearly completed, we expanded to include transcription opportunities for other handwritten materials; DIY History was launched in October of 2012.”

And what were your goals going into the project?

SA: “The main goal, as with most crowdsourcing projects, was to make historic artifacts more accessible. We wanted to be able to handle the records better—for example, making them more easily searchable; but also  by asking the public to interact with the materials in new ways. Another example:  texts can be scanned with OCR (optical character recognition) add full text searchability, you can’t do that other primary source materials like handwritten documents or photographs. To make the documents usable requires time and money—paying people to transcribe or describe each item; and anyway that that doesn’t scale with traditional library workflows. By asking volunteers to do this and attaching their contributions to the artifacts in our digital library, users can search on this added text to more quickly and easily find what they’re looking for.

What did you have to do to make Scripto work for you? And were there any technical challenges?

Jennifer Wolfe: “To run its crowdsourcing project, DIY History uses Omeka and Scripto. We are using Omeka as our content management system. We pretty much use Scripto right out of the box, with some minor tweaking. Which we did in-house, by the way. Scripto allows us oversight of all these transcriptions with a modest staff of editors. We really try not to do much editing—most transcriptions remain pretty much as our transcribers finish them.”

Are there challenges you did not anticipate?

SA: “We face some of the same challenges any crowdsourcing project would face—formatting, for example. Many of our transcribers feel it is important to reproduce the actual look of the documents, and that is sometimes hard to do. We would rather they focus on the content and not so much the appearance.”

JW: “Scaling was another consideration. Our project includes many more primary sources than some do, and we needed to be able to deal with materials from several collections. The sheer number of items, hundreds of thousands, means that we needed an efficient workflow.

With more than 30,000 finished transcriptions, DIY History continues to be an example of what crowdsourcing can do. Take a few dedicated volunteers and some tools, and you can empower them in new ways.

It’s been twenty-two months now since we opened the War Department archives to community transcription, and ever since then we have been steadily adding finished documents to our archive. What started with just a dozen or so volunteers has grown into an active, vigorous community of volunteer transcribers.

We offer here yet another snapshot at our transcription activity.

As of this morning, we have 1,272 users-fully 215 them have transcribed within the last 90 days, which is about 17%. This number has held remarkably steady for many months. Those transcribers have made more than 10,422 saves to War Department documents, which is about 900 more than at the last update. That works out to 1,902 finished documents, along with another 36 documents begun. Additionally, transcribers have initiated nearly 400 conversations using the “talk” feature. We also know that on average, each document is edited about three times before it is finished. Moreover, we have had 49,707 total page views.

By now we have an incredibly rich variety of folks transcribing,  from classroom teachers to journalists, from archivists to doctoral candidates,and from park rangers to genealogists. There are folks transcribing from every American state, and from six different continents. We have unaffiliated transcribers as well as those attached to institutions, ranging from major research universities to historical societies, and from the National Park Service to the Cherokee. Among those that specify an interest or focus, those interests range from professional research, to family research, to classroom activities. Some of our transcribers had extensive experience with historical documents when they began; for others, this is their first encounter with two hundred-year old letters and handwriting. Many of our transcribers have only worked on a few documents, but we have a growing number of people who have transcribed dozens of them. Some of our transcribers have no particular interest in the War Department Papers, but are evaluating Scripto to use in their own projects.

The documents themselves vary widely in content. Some describe internal disciplinary action. Others include nominations for military posts. Many documents request supplies or instructions; there are supply lists and officers’ commissions, as well as intelligence or action reports.

As we continue forward with the project, users may still register for a transcription account.

It’s been twenty-one months now since we opened the War Department archives to community transcription, and ever since then we have been steadily adding finished documents to our archive. What started with just a dozen or so volunteers has grown into an active, vigorous community of volunteer transcribers.

We offer here yet another snapshot at our transcription activity.

As of this morning, we have 1,205 users-fully 210 them have transcribed within the last 90 days, which is about 17%. Those transcribers have made more than 9,520 saves to War Department documents, which is about 2,000 more than at the last update. That works out to 1,559 finished documents, along with another 29 documents begun. Additionally, transcribers have initiated approximately 366 conversations using the “talk” feature. We also know that on average, each document is edited about three times before it is finished. Moreover, we have had 45,300 total page views.

Our transcribers truly represent a variety of experience: we have independent scholars, museum curators, librarians, doctoral candidates, tribal historians, park rangers, genealogists, and many other kinds of folks transcribing. There are transcribers from every American state, and from six different continents. Affiliations range from major research universities to historical societies, and from the National Park Service to the Chickasaw Nation. Their interests range from professional research, to family research, to classroom activities. Some of our transcribers had extensive experience with historical documents when they began; for others, this is their first encounter with two hundred-year old letters and handwriting. Many of our transcribers have only worked on a few documents, but several have transcribed dozens of them. Some of our transcribers have no particular interest in the War Department Papers, but are evaluating Scripto to use in their own projects.

The documents themselves vary widely in content. Some describe intelligence reports from the American frontier. Others include nominations for government posts. Many documents request supplies or instructions; there are supply lists and officers’ commissions, as well as transcripts of investigations and disciplinary proceedings.

As we continue forward with the project, users may still register for a transcription account.

It’s been twenty months now since we opened the War Department archives to community transcription, and ever since then we have been steadily adding finished documents to our archive. What started with just a dozen or so volunteers has grown into an active, vigorous community of volunteer transcribers.

We offer here yet another snapshot at our transcription activity.

To date, we have 1,157 users-fully 192 them have transcribed within the last 90 days, which is about 16%. Those transcribers have made more than 7,503 saves to War Department documents, which is about 800 more than at the last update. That works out to 1,369 finished documents, along with another 17 documents begun. Additionally, transcribers have initiated approximately 349 conversations using the “talk” feature. We also know that on average, each document is edited about three times before it is finished.

Our transcribers truly represent a cross-section of life: we have high school students, museum curators, demographers, doctoral candidates, tribal historians, park rangers, musicians, and many other kinds of folks transcribing. There are transcribers from every American state, and from six different continents. Affiliations range from theological seminaries to historical societies, and from the National Park Service to the Chickasaw Nation. Their interests range from personal research, to genealogy, to dissertation research. Some of our transcribers had extensive experience with historical documents when they began; for others, this is their first encounter with two hundred-year old letters and handwriting. Many of our transcribers have only worked on a few documents, but several have transcribed dozens of them. Some of our transcribers have no particular interest in the War Department Papers, but are evaluating Scripto to use in their own projects.

The documents themselves vary widely in content. Some are orders to military officers. Others describe treaty negotiations or terms. Many documents request supplies or instructions; there are financial records and officers’ commissions, as well as transcripts of disciplinary proceedings. A recent series of documents showed that a high-ranking military officer was involved in international espionage.

As we continue forward with the project, users may still register for a transcription account.