Transcribe letters

The first thing you should do is log-in or set up a user profile on the system. With a personal user name and password, you can access our pages for volunteers.

Log in to your user account and go to the transcription desk linked in the main menu. Here you will find letters to work on.

Once you enter the transcription desk, you will see letters to transcribe. To find a letter that interests you, use the filters on the left, e.g. authors, dates or keywords. Each letter has a progress bar that indicates if a letter has already been completed. Letters that are 100% completed are currently awaiting review by an administrator. So please choose a letter that is less than 100% complete. You may either work on an untouched letter or review and improve letters others have transcribed. We have found that as more people edit one letter, the better the transcriptions get. Besides, some letters are very long and several volunteers can work on one folio each. If another volunteer is working on a letter, you will receive a notification that the letter is blocked. You may come back to it later and transcribe another letter in the meantime. Do scroll down the page. Often there are untouched letters to transcribe quite a bit down.

After selecting a letter you would like to work on, the letter images and a transcription form open up on your screen. Please note that you do not have to print the letters to transcribe them, they can all be transcribed online in the textbox below the letter. The textbox can be detached from the letter image and moved across the screen if you keep the left button of your mouse pressed down. You can re-position the textbox as often as you like. Please use the zoom on the right of the image to blow up a letter in small script.

Please type the letter out as you see it in the original image, respecting paragraphs and line-breaks as well as highlighted or deleted words.

SHIFT+ENTER creates a linebreak! ENTER creates a paragraph! It is very important to differentiate these two.

Besides, we do not correct spelling mistakes in the original letters as these mistakes tell us something about language usage and educational standards at the time.

The buttons above the transcription field will help you mark additional formatting. Address lines and salutes, for instance, have to be placed in a tag. Open our sample letter to see what it looks like. Each folio of a letter needs to be transcribed in a separate box. A new box will open automatically as soon as you click on the next letter image.

Thanks to our auto-save, you do not need to worry about saving your edits before logging out. Anything you add to the textboxes will be saved within a few seconds.

You can review all your transcriptions and edits in the “my transcriptions” section in your personal profile. This section keeps track of all the letters you have worked on. You can always go back to your user profile and update them. Furthermore, you may use this information to prove your voluntary work to volunteering agencies or educational bodies.

Although this may look challenging at first, do not be afraid of making mistakes! You and other volunteers can easily go back to the letter and update the transcription. If you have any questions, please email us or join our community on Twitter and Facebook. Social media are a great platform to meet other Letters 1916-1923 volunteers and to receive regular updates about our project. We are happy to help you with any step of the process.