What’s the common theme of these interfaces from the National Archives (United States)?
- Tag – Tagging is a fun and easy way for you to help make National Archives records found more easily online. By adding keywords, terms, and labels to a record, you can do your part to help the next person discover that record. For more information about tagging National Archives records, follow “Tag It Tuesdays,” a weekly feature on the NARAtions Blog. [includes “missions” (sets of materials for tagging), rated as “beginner,” “intermediate,” and “advanced.” Or you can create your own mission.]
- Transcribe – By contributing to transcriptions, you can help the National Archives make historical documents more accessible. Transcriptions help in searching for the document as well as in reading and understanding the document. The work you do transcribing a handwritten or typed document will help the next person discover and use that record.
The transcription tool features over 300 documents ranging from the late 18th century through the 20th century for citizen archivists to transcribe. Documents include letters to a civil war spy, presidential records, suffrage petitions, and fugitive slave case files.
[A pilot project with 300 documents but one you should follow. Public transcription (crowd-sourced if you want the popular term) of documents has the potential to open up vast archives of materials.]
- Edit Articles – Our Archives Wiki is an online space for researchers, educators, genealogists, and Archives staff to share information and knowledge about the records of the National Archives and about their research.
Here are just a few of the ways you may want to participate:
- Create new pages and edit pre-existing pages
- Share your research tips
- Store useful information discovered during research
- Expand upon a description in our online catalog
Check out the “Getting Started” page. When you’re ready to edit, you’ll need to log in by creating a username and password.
- Upload & Share – Calling all researchers! Start sharing your digital copies of National Archives records on the Citizen Archivist Research group on Flickr today.
Researchers scan and photograph National Archives records every day in our research rooms across the country — that’s a lot of digital images for records that are not yet available online. If you have taken scans or photographs of records you can help make them accessible to the public and other researchers by sharing your images with the National Archives Citizen Archivist Research Group on Flickr.
- Index the Census – Citizen Archivists, you can help index the 1940 census!
The National Archives is supporting the 1940 census community indexing project along with other archives, societies, and genealogical organizations. The release of the decennial census is one of the most eagerly awaited record openings. The 1940 census is available to search and browse, free of charge, on the National Archives 1940 Census web site. But, the 1940 census is not yet indexed by name.
You can help index the 1940 census by joining the 1940 census community indexing project. To get started you will need to download and install the indexing software, register as an indexing volunteer, and download a batch of images to transcribe. When the index is completed, the National Archives will make the named index available for free.
The common theme?
The tagging entry sums it up with: “…you can do your part to help the next person discover that record.”
That’s the “trick” of topic maps. Once a fact about a subject is found, you can preserve your “finding” for the next person.