by Peggy Robin
The Smithsonian wants your help.
You may be able to provide a badly needed skill, one that is becoming harder to find as time moves on.
No, they're not asking you to help them curate artifacts, clean fossils, or catalog the thousands of butterflies preserved in drawers. They have all the experts they need to do those things. They not even asking you to fundraise -- though of course they could use the money! Nor do they want you to show your support for the museum professionals as they try to carry out their scientific, historical, and cultural missions while under fire from attackers with a destructive political agenda.
What they wants from you, select members of the public, is much simpler. They want to know: Can you read cursive? And if so, can you read old letters or old documents -- like the pension files of Revolutionary War veterans? There are far too many old, handwritten papers for the paid professional staff to handle. It's something that perhaps some public spirited retirees could take on as volunteers.
What about young people who need community service hours to fulfill the requirement for high school graduation? Well, there's noo use asking them, as in all likelihood, they never received any formal instruction in writing cursive, or even reading it. It's been fifteen years (2010) since the cursive requirement was dropped from the Common Core -- and most states adjusted their curricula accordingly.,
Older readers -- particularly boomers and older Gen X'ers -- may remember (fondly or not!) many hours spent sitting at a small desk in a second or third-grade classroom, tracing over the rounded, connected forms of upper and lower case letters on special blue-and-red lined paper, and then receiving a grade for penmanship from the teacher at the end.
That's time now taken up in teaching the skill of "keyboarding."
So, if you have this increasing rare skill, and enough spare time to put it to use for your country, you may want to heed this call from the Smithsonian museum:
From Smithsonian Magazine: Can You Read This Cursive Handwriting?
Sarah Kuta - Daily Correspondent
January 17, 2025
Anyone with an internet connection can volunteer to transcribe historical documents and help make the archives' digital catalog more accessible.
The National Archives is brimming with historical documents written in cursive, including some that date back more than 200 years. But these texts can be difficult to read and understand—particularly for Americans who never learned cursive in school.
That’s why the National Archives is looking for volunteers who can help transcribe and organize its many handwritten records: The goal of the Citizen Archivist program is to help “unlock history” by making digital documents more accessible, according to the project’s website.
Every year, the National Archives digitizes tens of millions of records. The agency uses artificial intelligence and a technology known as optical character recognition to extract text from historical documents. But these methods don’t always work, and they aren’t always accurate.
That’s where human volunteers come in. By transcribing digital pages, volunteers make it easier for scholars, genealogists and curious history buffs to find and read historical documents.
[snip]
Getting started is easy: All you need to do is sign up online. The free program is open to anyone with an internet connection.
“There’s no application,” Suzanne Isaacs, a community manager with the National Archives, tells USA Today’s Elizabeth Weise. “You just pick a record that hasn’t been done and read the instructions. It’s easy to do for a half hour a day or a week.”
If you’re not confident in your cursive deciphering skills, the National Archives has other tasks available, too—such as “tagging” documents that other volunteers have already transcribed. Tagging helps improve the searchability of records.
Already, more than 5,000 volunteers have joined the Citizen Archivist program. Many are hard at work on “missions,” or groups of documents that need transcribing and tagging. For example, current missions include Revolutionary War pension files and employee contracts from 1866 to 1870.
[snip]
Volunteers can spend as much or as little time as they want transcribing and tagging. Some participants have dedicated years of their lives to the program—like Alex Smith, a retiree from Pennsylvania. Over nine years, he transcribed more than 100,000 documents, as WTOP’s Kate Ryan reported in March 2024.
“I was looking for something to give purpose, and could give some structure to my retired life,” he said. “It was just perfect.”
[snip]
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Read the full article here.
Instagram @usnatarchives
Is reading cursive your superpower? 📜🔍
The National Archives and the @nationalparkservice are collaborating on a special project to transcribe the #RevolutionaryWar veteran pension files.
Join in today and help tell the story of America's first veterans!
archives.gov/citizen-archivist/missions/revolutionary-war-pension-files
#RevWarVets #CitizenArchivist #NationalArchives #Veterans
#RevWarVets #CitizenArchivist #NationalArchives #Veterans
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Now let me render the call more elegantly:
I would be very pleased if this appeal on the Cleveland Park Listserv resulted in at least a few list members putting their John Hancocks on the dotted line!
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Still Life with Robin is published on the Clevleand Park Listserv and on All Life Is Local on Saturdays.
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