Hello and welcome to our Citizen Archivists.
With the help of our virtual volunteers, we are increasing online access to the historical
records of the National Archives.
Today we will show you how to begin contributing metadata and information about our records
through tagging, transcribing and adding comments in the National Archives Catalog.
Once you have registered and are logged into your account, you are ready to begin contributing.
If you need help with the registration process, please watch our “Getting Started” video.
The National Archives Catalog is located at catalog [dot] archives [dot] gov.
Login to your account by accessing the menu option in the upper right hand corner of your
screen.
Click “login” and enter your existing username and password.
Your account dashboard will show the history of your contributions, including the number
of tags, transcriptions and comments you’ve added to records in the Catalog.
You’ll notice a notifications button in the upper right hand corner.
This will show you if there is activity by others on a record that you’ve worked on.
For instance, for demonstration purposes, you’ll see that the National Archives Citizen
Archivist account has deleted their tag on a record that you’ve also contributed to.
Now let’s get started contributing.
In your browser, let’s open a new tab to check out the Citizen Archivist Dashboard.
Our dashboard is located at archives [dot] gov [slash] citizen [hyphen] archivist
From our dashboard, browse our curated missions for suggested records.
Missions are groups of records related to a particular topic.
Each mission contains a brief description of the records and the mission - whether we
are asking for your help tagging or transcribing.
In some missions, we may ask you to both tag and transcribe.
Click on a topic that interests you, and it will bring your directly to those records
in the Catalog, where you can begin tagging or transcribing.
New missions are added regularly, so check back often to see what’s new.
Let’s start with a tagging mission first.
This “1970’s America” mission asks us to tag details and features in photographs
taken for the EPA’s Documerica program.
I’ll click on the box and it will take me directly to the Catalog.
As you can see, you are already logged into your National Archives Catalog account, as
your username will appear in the upper right hand corner of the screen.
You’ll also see that there are 136 results on this page.
This means that there are 136 records in this particular mission.
I’ll open up this first record.
With tags, we are asking you to add meaningful keywords or labels that describe the record.
When you look at this photograph, add keywords about what you see.
Things you see in the image, what is happening in the photo, and any people or objects that
you might see.
So what I am going to do is add a few tags to further describe this photograph.
You can add tags here on the left hand side of the description:
The best tags identify people, places, objects, and actions that are not included in the title
or the scope and content note of the record’s description.
These tags that you add are now searchable in the Catalog, which helps make this record
more discoverable for you or the next user.
Now let’s move on to transcription.
Let’s go back to our citizen archivist dashboard and find a transcription mission to work on.
Let’s try the “Disbarring Attorneys and Agents, 1887-1907” mission.
Click on the box, and it will bring you right to those records in the Catalog.
I’ll click on the first record in the list to bring up the description.
Just below the image viewer, you’ll see a “View/Add Contributions” box.
Click on View/Add Contributions, and then click “Transcribe.”
In the transcription field, type exactly what you see in the document.
Using your mouse or these image icons, you can zoom in or zoom out of the record, and drag the image
around in the viewer in order to see it better.
In the transcription field, you simply type what you see and follow the order and layout
as best you can.
Type words exactly as they are written in the document.
This includes capitalization, abbreviations, names, dates, and even misspelled words.
For this record, I am going to begin transcribing what I see on the page.
[typing]
You’ll also notice that there are some handwritten initials at the very top of the record.
I want to indicate in the transcription that these initials appear, but it is difficult
to make out exactly what these initials say.
So I’m going to use brackets to indicate this.
[typing]
Once you begin typing, a “save” button will appear in the lower right hand corner.
As you are working, we recommend pressing save often to submit your work and save your
transcription with the document.
The goal of transcription is to enhance searchability.
Every word you transcribe helps improve search results for that document.
When transcribing, don’t worry too much about matching the format of the original
document.
The most important thing is to type each word that appears on the page so that it becomes
searchable.
On this Contributions page, you’ll also see that you can also add tags and comments.
You can use tags on textual records to describe people, places or activities that are included
within the document.
Any tags added on this contribution page would apply to this particular page of the document,
You can also add comments.
The comments section is a free text box that allows you to add additional information about
the record.
We invite you to share your knowledge about the records, tell other users about related
records, or share what you might expect to find in a particular item, file unit, or series.
Thank you for your interest in the Citizen Archivist program, and for helping to make
the records of the National Archives more accessible to all.
If you have questions, please email us at catalog [at] nara [dot] gov