The Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN) announced yesterday the launch of a crowdsourcing project to transcribe handwritten and microfilmed items in the Héritage collection that is part of the Canadiana collections. The goal is to make the records full text searchable.
The Héritage collection includes 41 million pages of archival records, and about 60 percent of these pages are handwritten.
The transcription project was launched with the participation of staff from 12 member institutions.
At this point, however, it is not clear if this project is open to other organizations or only to the CRKN member institutions. CRKN did not indicate in its announcement who the participating member institutions are.
There are, for example, genealogical organizations and genealogists, researchers, and historians who may want to take part in a transcription project.
If your organization would like to join the project, you are asked to identify a project coordinator and email digitization@crkn.ca, stating your interest. There is no minimum time commitment, and participants are welcome to contribute as much or as little time as is appropriate.
Participating institutions will use a transcription crowdsourcing tool developed by CRKN associate member, Our Digital World, to transcribe four collections contained in Héritage, which include both English and French materials. These transcriptions will be used by the CRKN team to enhance full-text search and metadata for these collections.
Our Digital World and Library and Archives Canada are supporting this project.
In 2018, CRKN merged with Canadiana.org, an organization dedicated to the preservation and access of Canada’s documentary heritage since 1978. As a merged organization, CRKN continues its core licensing activities for scholarly journal content, while expanding support for the digitization and preservation of, and access to, Canadian heritage content.
