Welcome to Newberry Transcribe!

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Thank you for visiting our crowdsourcing project, where you can help advance historical research by transcribing handwritten letters and diaries.

The Newberry Library’s modern manuscript collections contain millions of pages of handwritten documents, which are freely accessible to anyone who visits the building. Over the past few decades, we’ve digitized hundreds of thousands of these pages, making them available online. As a result, our audience has grown to include users from around the world.

However, while digitization has significantly increased access, using these materials still requires the same time-consuming effort as working with physical documents. Each user must carefully examine each page to decipher often difficult-to-read handwriting, effectively starting from scratch.

Enter cultural heritage crowdsourcing! Contributors can make a huge difference by transcribing far more than library staff can alone. As a volunteer, you can select a page, transcribe what you see, and submit your work. Once completed, the page is transcribed for good—making it accessible to scholars, students, researchers, and anyone who needs searchable, easy-to-read text. This not only benefits users who are searching for specific terms, but also those who struggle with cursive handwriting or rely on screen readers.

And the best part? It’s fun! Explore the letters of twentieth-century authors, learn about travel before modern conveniences, and discover dramatic stories from decades past. Delete your word game apps, and puzzle out centuries-old handwriting instead—tackle a fun challenge, learn about the past, and contribute to scholarship, all at the same time.

FAQs

coming soon!