Black History Month Crowdsourcing event – Digital Learning & Scholarship

Join us on Tuesday, February 26^th from noon to 2 p.m. in the Digital Scholarship Studio for a Black History Month Crowdsourcing event. Bring your lunch and a laptop (limited chromebooks will be available) and help contribute to efforts to make archives celebrating black history more publicly available. Participants may choose among projects hosted by the Library of Congress, Smithsonian, and other sites to transcribe manuscript collections or help create and edit Wikipedia entries to increase awareness of important women in black history as part of the Women in Red campaign. No previous skill required. Snacks provided. Please contact Mary Mahoney with any questions at Mary.Mahoney@trincoll.edu

Sample Projects:

Projects from the Library of Congress:

Mary Church Terrell: Advocate for African Americans and Women

Link: https://crowd.loc.gov/campaigns/mary-church-terrell-advocate-for-african-americans-and-women/

Project Description from the Library of Congress: Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954), educator, women’s rights advocate, and civil rights activist, was born into a prosperous Memphis family. A graduate of Oberlin College, in 1895 she became the first black woman appointed to the District of Columbia Board of Education. The following year, she became the founding president of the National Association of Colored Women and, in 1909, a founder of the NAACP. Terrell’s papers document all phases of her public life, as well as her personal affairs. Help us transcribe her diaries and correspondence to discover her remarkable career and life.

Projects from the Smithsonian Digital Volunteers Transcription Center:

James Brown Guitar

Link: https://transcription.si.edu/project/15354

Project Description from the Smithsonian: This Epiphone guitar owned by James Brown is signed on all four sides and features messages of praise, thanks, and birthday wishes by notable people including Casey Kasem and Ozzy Osbourne. Transcription of the messages and signatures on Brown’s guitar will help Museum staff update their records with a list of all of the artists that signed the guitar and will allow interested researchers to more easily locate information about this iconic artist.

Freedmen’s Bureau Records

Link: https://transcription.si.edu/browse?filter=owner:16

Project Description: The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, or Freedmen’s Burseu, was founded in 1865 to assist freedmen, women, and children after the war. The Bureau built schools, helped settle disputes, and regulated contracts between freedpeople and white employers. Help transcribe records of the Bureau to make the records searchable for researchers.

Zooniverse Transcription Projects:

African American Civil War Soldiers

Link: https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/usct/african-american-civil-war-soldiers/

Project Description: Help transcribe the military records of African American soldiers in the American Civil War.

Anti-Slavery Manuscripts

Link: https://www.antislaverymanuscripts.org/

Project Description: The Boston Public Library is asking for help transforming its collection of handwritten correspondence between anti-slavery activists in the 19^th century into texts that can be more easily read and researched by students, teachers, historians, and big data applications.

WikiProject Women in Red: February 2019 Black Women Campaign

Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Women_in_Red/Meetup/110

Project Description from Wikipedia: Women in Red (WiR) is dedicated to addressing the gender gap in wikipedia entries, turning red links to blue. (Only 17.78% of the English Wikipedia’s biographies are about women). In February 2019, Women in Red is focusing on black women in conjunction with Black History Month. We hope both inexperienced and seasoned editors will join us in creating biographies and other articles about black women, as well as their achievements, writings, organizations, and awards. This virtual editathon allows enthusiasts from around the globe to participate in our initiative.

Redlists for the February 2019 Black Women Campaign

These are lists of redlinked articles to be created. A wide variety of redlink lists can be found on our Redlist index. Those relating to black women are listed below:

Black women in the visual arts (created automatically from Wikidata)
Black history (crowd sourced list)
Black women in the US (crowd sourced list)
Indigenous black women in Australia (crowd sourced list)

Never edited Wikipedia before? No problem! Here are some resources to review to help you prepare to edit with us on February 26^th. Educational Technology and Library staff will also be available to help at the event.