Volunteers Needed to Transcribe Civil War Documents

By Amber Lester Kennedy Sunday, July 10, 2011

The passage of time can make even the mundane seem fascinating. Timeworn pages, covered in perfect penmanship, become precious just by being old, even if all they contain are notations on the weather. If reading century-old scribbles on yellowed pages appeals to you, the Earl Gregg Swem Library needs your help.

The library recently launched a transcription project as part of “From Fights to Rights: The Long Road to a More Perfect Union,” a four-year project commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Civil War and the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Movement. The transcription project is a massive effort to transcribe between 3,000-5,000 manuscripts from the Civil War and Civil Rights eras. Once transcribed, the documents will be searchable online and make historical information easily accessible to the public.

The library is looking for volunteers to help transcribe the documents, which include diaries, letters and ledgers that were donated or purchased with private monetary gifts to the library. Volunteers can transcribe the items from home; the library staff is working to scan the documents and convert them into PDFs that can be enlarged for easier reading. They don’t have a set deadline, but University Archivist Amy Schindler said they’re aiming to have everything transcribed by 2015.

Volunteers can work “when they can do it,” Schindler said. “This is sort of a self-driven project. People just need to contact us and be willing to give it a try,” she said. “If they can’t figure out every word in every document, that’s fine. We just say to keep reading and it may make sense later.”

The library has received about 50 completed transcriptions back from volunteers. After Special Collections staff and volunteers review the transcripts, they upload the work to SWEM’s website, where digital images of the original documents are already available to the public. To see the project in action, click here to view both the transcript and the original handwritten diary of Asa John Wyatt, who documented the marches of the 21st Virginia Infantry Regiment in the spring of 1861 and later, in the spring of 1862 as part of Stonewall Jackson’s Shenandoah Valley Campaign.

So far, about 50 people have volunteered and have found the project engaging. One volunteer who is passionate about gardening has been fascinated by the diary of a woman who lived in the area in 1862. “She’s reading about this woman growing celery in Virginia in 1862, and today, she would have never have thought celery would grow in Virginia,” Schindler said. “I think that’s charming, when folks find that personal interest that helps them connect.”

For more information about the project, including information about how to volunteer and transcription guidelines, click here. To view the documents already in the collection, click here.