NARA takes crowdsourcing approach to tagging historic documents

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The National Archives and Records Administration wants amateur historians to get involved in putting electronic tags on its historic documents online.

With the idea of improving searches of its historical documents, the National Archives and Records Administration is asking the public to adds tags to documents in its online database.

For example, volunteers in the crowdsourcing project could tag an electronic copy of a letter or handwritten petition to Congress by inserting into the document searchable keywords, or tags, that correspond with words in the document. The tags could include names of individuals such as “George Washington,” location names such as “Maryland” or “Mount Vernon,” organizations such as “Congress,” dates, events, laws and many other keywords.

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In the program’s first month of operation, volunteers have added more than 1,000 tags to historic records in the Online Public Access system, U.S. Archivist David Ferriero announced Aug. 3 in a blog entry.

“Convinced that our users know a lot about the records we are stewarding, this is an opportunity to contribute that knowledge,” Ferriero wrote. “As you search the catalog, you are invited to tag any archival description, person, or organization name records with the keywords or labels that are meaningful to you."

NARA officials expect the crowdsourced tagging to enhance the quality of the content and make it easier for people to search the documents, he added.

Users must register with NARA and agree to follow basic guidelines, such as avoiding the use of any personal information in the tags. NARA staff members review the tags before they are published.

NARA said the tags will be visible the day they are approved and indexed overnight. The agency also plans to hold group tagging events to help facilitate use of the features.

In a related effort, NARA’s Wikipedian in residence, Dominic McDevitt-Parks, has been recruiting volunteers to digitize significant historic documents this summer. After they are digitized, the electronic versions of the documents will be proofread, tagged and indexed.

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