ZSR Special Collections and Archives is excited to announce the addition of several new manuscript transcriptions to our digital collection, including over 200 pages of early Wake Forest College Board of Trustee Minutes, 1834-1871. Others include the First Treasurer’s Book and an Index to Accounts. Check out this sample:

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A transcribed page from the 1834 WFC Board of Trustee Minutes

We definitely don’t tackle all this work on our own! Far from it. These transcriptions are the products of a collaborative, crowdsourced effort. ZSR Library partners with From the Page, an online platform where volunteers transcribe, index, and describe historic documents. Volunteers review scans of handwritten material and word-process the text. They also add metadata regarding key terms or content. Ultimately, the volunteers’ work produces documents that are easier to access, read, and keyword search.

To learn more about transcribing with From the Page, check out this video.

For SCA’s first round of crowd-sourced projects, 20 volunteers from around the globe contributed time and effort to transcribe nearly 10,000 lines of text. We are immensely grateful for these contributions and inspired to keep it going.

We’d love for you to join our efforts! Every level of contribution counts. Some folks transcribe a single page; others, donate hours to the process. All you need to get started is computer and internet access.

If you’d like to volunteer for transcribing, reviewing, or editing, follow these simple steps:

  1. Sign up at FromThePage.com
  2. Search “Wake Forest Archives” for active projects.
  3. Email archives@wfu.edu with any questions.

Our newest project includes records from our NC Baptist Historical Collection. Transcription conventions and other supports are linked within projects. There are even helpful guides and resources that answer the common question “How Do I Read Old Handwriting?”

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For Wake Forest faculty, staff, or students interested in incorporating custom transcription projects into classes or organizational activities, please contact us at archives@wfu.edu. Transcription projects are a great way to bring history to life while also promoting collaborative dialogue and primary source literacy.