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| Smithsonian Magazine |
No, I haven't taken up medical transcription, though it might be easier to decipher than what I have started working on. With gardening done for the season, except for leaf raking which will go on the rest of this month, I needed something to fill that outdoor time. I’m still knitting kitty blankets for a local cat rescue, volunteering at a nearby food bank, and working on my third book.
I looked around for another "project" to work on, and recalled an article in Smithsonian magazine about the National Archives needing people who can read cursive to help translate documents. (Article linked at the top of this page.)
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| Citizen Archivist |
Starting with the shortest, most legible pages I could find, I worked on a situation just after the emancipation in Georgia. Other documents were about deporting Chinese laborers who were in the country illegally in the early 1900s. These latter papers were a sad reminder of the state of affairs today, but also led me to learn more about the history at these times.
Then I discovered typewritten documents that also need transcription in order to help researchers who use these archives. Not only is this work giving me a way to contribute to the National Archives mission, but I’m learning intimate details about history.
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| This hurts my eyes and brain! |
I’m still unable to help with the spidery, faded documents and tagging the photos and drawings is more advanced than I care to do yet. Tagging involves describing what is in a photo, such as names of people, places, and description of an activity depicted.
I'm happy to contribute a page or two every few days, and delighted that cursive penmanship classes decades ago are proving useful.
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