McMaster University initiates crowd-sourcing project to label thousands of old postcards

McMaster University library staff in Hamilton, Ontario have launched an online crowd-sourcing campaign to label 4,000 old postcards with their country, city, and date of origin.

The antique postcard collection was donated to the university archives seven years ago by private collector Morris Norman.

Once all the postcards in the McMaster University Postcard Collection have been identified, they will be added to the Digital Archive.

Once all the postcards in the McMaster University Postcard Collection have been identified, they will be added to the Digital Archive.

According to a Hamilton Spectator article, the postcards have been scanned, but due to sheer volume, they are still sitting uncategorized in 16 boxes in the library archives. “Canadian cards are categorized only by province, international cards by country. If someone is looking for cards from a specific time or city, they have to comb through the boxes.”

Archives assistant Bridget Whittle, with help from other library staff, has set up a website where anyone can fill out information about each postcard.

There are fields to fill out the card’s country, province and city of origin, as well as the card’s date. There’s also a notes section where postcard aficionados can add any other pertinent information.

It is very easy to fill in the fields — and somewhat addictive. I started by transcribing the information on a couple of postcards and found myself filling in a couple of dozen.

Once all the cards have been identified they will be added to McMaster’s Digital Archive where anyone can look at them. McMaster University Library says, “Not only will you be able to see what your favourite Canadian (and many international) cities looked like 80-100 years ago, but you will help researchers find and access valuable material, previously inaccessible.”

Anyone interested in contributing to the project can visit postcards.mcmaster.ca to help categorize the postcards.

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2 Responses to McMaster University initiates crowd-sourcing project to label thousands of old postcards

  1. Thanks for highlighting this project! We really appreciate it.

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