The Smithsonian's crowd-sourcing transcription project!

The Smithsonian has developed a really cool crowd-sourcing project to help transcribe objects and records in their vast collections!  The most recent project involves the Martin W. Gorman Collection of plant specimens collected in Alaska in 1902.  The Smithsonian Collections Blog tells you all about this newest component of their transcription project.

You can read more about the transcription project here.  The software is incredibly easy to use and there are a number of different collections exposed for transcription.  The painting diary of American Modernist painter Oscar Bluemner, a scrapbook of early aeronautica collected by William Upcott, and  Charles Henry Hart's American artists autograph collection are just a few of the transcription projects grouped under "The American Experience."

I jumped right in and tried my hand at transcribing a clipping from December 1836 with the headline:

MR MONCK MASON'S ACCOUNT OF THE AERONAUTICAL EXPEDITION.
FROM LONDON TO WEILBURG.

It was an absolutely fascinating and poetic description of a balloon voyage.  Here's a lovely paragraph from the account:

"The scene itself was one which exceeds description.  The whole plane of the earth's surface, for many and many a league around, as far and farther than the eye distinctly could embrace, seemed absolutely teeming with the scattered fires of a watchful population, and exhibted [sic] a starry spectacle below that almost rivalled in brilliancy the remoter lustre of the concave firmament above.  Incessantly during the earlier portion of the might, ere the vigilant inhabitants had finally retired to rest, large sources of light, betokening the presence of some more extensive community, would appear just looming above the distant horizon in the direction in which we were advancing, bearing at first no faint resemblance to the effect produced by some vast conflagration, when seen from such a distance as to preclude the minute investigation of its details.  By degrees, as we drew nigh, this confused mass of illumination would appear to increase in intensity, extending itself over a larger portion of the earth and assuming a distincter form and a more imposing appearance, until at length, having attained a position from whence we could more immediately direct our view, it would gradually resolve itself into its parts, and shooting out into the streets, or spreading into the squares, present us with the most perfect model of a town, diminished only in size, according to the elevation from which we happened at the time to observe it."

I encourage you to try your hand at transcription!

My First Gif

I have been tinkering and tinkering every now and then to create an animated gif!  Finally, success!  This animated gif of Charles Demuth's painting I Saw the Figure Five In Gold is also a comment on embedded metadata, because the cataloging information about the painting, the text of the poem, and the painting are all part of the gif.

(I am adding my gifs to a gallery page on this blog!)

The Public Domain Review

The Public Domain Review, a project of the Open Knowledge Foundation, is a fascinating resource!



Moose, "from the Austrian painter Aloys Zötl’s Bestiarium, a series of exquisite paintings of various animals undertaken from 1831 through until his death in 1887. He was relatively unknown until, decades after his death, his work was 're-discovered' by surrealist André Breton..."



The Public Domain Review publishes articles which focus on works old enough to have entered the pubic domain and which are available online in openly-licensed digitised form. In general, we encourage contributions which highlight material at the more unorthodox end of the cultural spectrum – curiosities, obscure theories, strange inventions, and so on. If on a well-known figure then we tend to favour an unusual angle or a focus on lesser known works. As well as pieces which focus on particular works, we also welcome articles with a broader historical focus, though they should be closely aligned with interesting material to which we can link.

Recent articles include: Still Booking on De Quincy's Mail-Coach, and The Forgotten Tales of the Brothers Grimm.  The review also "collects" public domain images, film, audio, and text, providing links to other resources as well.



Frontispiece and title-page of the of the 1819 edition of Kinder- und Hausmärchen illustrated by Ludwig Emil Grimm, younger brother to Jacob and Wilhelm. This second edition was the first to be illustrated and the first to omit texts found in the first – Source.