Blog #6: DIY History

A little while ago someone introduced me to DIY History, a website run by The University of Iowa Libraries. This is a public digitization project, very similar to the one run by the New York Public Library. However, DIY History focuses on handwritten letters, diaries, and books. The collections include culinary manuscripts, women's letters and diaries, and civil war letters and diaries. Overall, it is a much more personal project than What's on the Menu? because everything is handwritten in a formerly private location. Some of the items waiting to be transcribed date back to the 18th century, while others are from the more modern 20th century.
The purpose of digitization projects like DIY History and What's on the Menu? is to increase accessibility. By digitizing and transcribing objects, it makes it easier for archives/libraries to catalog and at the same time it improves searchability by enabling the use of keywords. It is definitely useful to transcribe handwritten items, which could not be achieved with a machine, like typed text could be.
Opening transcription to the public serves a dual purpose. It is a cheap, easy way for universities/libraries/archives to get things done. All they have to do is open a website and let eager internetters go to it. Otherwise it would be a long, slow, and costly project. At the same time, these projects do benefit the public as well. They offer a unique, engaging way to interact with history on a personal level.

Edit: So, amazingly, I wrote about this before this week's blog assignment, which was to participate in a crowdsourcing project. Obviously I've already done that - I have spent time transcribing on both DIY History and What's on the Menu?
I actually did another today, also without realizing it was the assignment, which was correcting the transcription for the "COOKERY" section on this digitized newspaper page from Australia. In this case, it seems that the text is automatically generated, but blurring and stray ink marks sometimes make the transcription messy, so it needs a lot of work. The main website is called Trove, and it's part of the National Library of Australia. Items available on the website include newspapers, books, maps, images, and music. There's actually a way for Australians to submit photos to Flickr, which then appear on the Trove website. I think that is an awesome way to get people involved and sharing information!
I think crowdsourcing projects are really neat. I love getting involved in them because it makes me feel like I did something special, even if it was just a little thing. I could spend hours transcribing old menus or newspapers or diaries. I also think having this information publicly and freely available is amazing. Without the internet or projects like these, I would never been able to interact with a 1902 newspaper from Australia or a New York menu from 1914.