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Keene State Turns to the Crowd for Document Transcription

Keene State College is joining a national trend of getting the public involved in crowd-sourcing the transcription of historical documents.

The college is working the with the state Division of Archives and Records Management to host citizen archivist training workshops where participants learn the ins and outs of reading and correctly transcribing letters, diaries and other historical records. The goal is to create a core group of volunteers who can help town historical societies and other organizations make documents more widely available to the public.

Libraries and archives around the country have been using public input to analyze images, transcribe documents and classify data. For example, the Smithsonian Institution's Transcription Center allows volunteers to work transcribe material from many of its museums.

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