Transcription Tuesday
It’s the start of a new year and a new decade, and the return of one of our favourite parts of working on Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine – Transcription Tuesday!
How you can be a family history hero on 4 February
We first launched Transcription Tuesday in 2017, and we’re so proud that it’s been such a success. Almost all family historians have been helped in their research by the hard work and generosity of volunteers. One of the biggest areas where volunteers contribute their time is transcribing records – the simple act of typing up handwritten records to create easily readable and searchable copies. The growth of the internet has been a game-changer, making it possible to search many key record sets online. But many more datasets have never been digitised or indexed, which limits the number of researchers who can access them. Volunteer transcribers play a vital role in making these records readily available to everyone.
We created Transcription Tuesday to give our readers the chance to help other family historians – and have fun along the way! Every year, we choose several volunteer-run transcription projects to support. All you need is a computer – you can work from home, or get together with other family historians in your area. Whether you’re an experienced transcriber or a beginner, whether you can give the whole day or just a bit of time, there’s something suitable for you, and we’d love you to take part. Our amazing readers always make a massive contribution to record transcription – in 2019 our volunteers even managed to transcribe an entire book of historic rail-worker accidents in one day, in partnership with the Rail Work, Life and Death project ( railwayaccidents.port.ac.uk).
Transcription Tuesday 2020 will take place on 4 February. This year, we’ve got a fantastic selection of family history projects: parish registers on Family Search, West Midlands police registers on the Ancestry World Archives Project, First World War prison camp records with the Internment Research Centre, and records from Royal Navy First World War Lives at Sea.
We’ll all be hard at work transcribing in the WDYTYA? Magazine office and at The National Archives in Kew, and we’d love to hear how the transcribers around the world are getting on. One of the most exciting parts of decoding the records is the glimpses that they offer into our ancestors’ lives, so we’d love to hear about the interesting stories you uncover. Please share your experiences on Twitter using the hashtag #TranscriptionTuesday, or on our Facebook group ( bit.ly/WDYTYAFBG) or forum ( whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/forum). For the first time, we’ll also hold an in-person event at The National Archives for the Lives at Sea project (see right).
In the run-up to Transcription Tuesday, we’ll publish details on our website (see below) about all four of the projects, with instructions of how to take part. We’ll also have updates on our weekly email newsletter (to subscribe, visit whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/newsletter). If you have any questions once the instructions have been published, please send us an email via wdytyaeditorial@immediate.co.uk.
‘For the first time, we’ll hold in-person group event at TNA’