A backstage pass to history
National Archives’ ‘citizen archivists’ have close-up view
What do a letter Martin Van Buren wrote to Queen Victoria, a telegram from Harpo Marx to John F. Kennedy and an inventory of Eva Braun’s possessions seized by the Allied Army have in common?
Alex Smith has transcribed all of them.
As a citizen archivist for the National Archives and Records Administration, Smith is one of thousands of volunteers helping to transcribe millions of digitized files so that their text can be searched online.
Eight years ago, Smith, now 70, was set to retire from his position at Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania when he came across a news article about the citizen archivist program. A graduate of Bowdoin College with an English degree and a penchant for history, he immediately settled on the program as a way to occupy his free time.
“I had been thinking about what it was, after I had retired, that I was going to do to give some structure and some passion to my life, and I thought, this is perfect,” he said.
NARA’s online catalog has descriptions of the administration’s holdings that researchers can use to locate files. But a computer can’t always pick up the text within the files, NARA catalog community manager Suzanne Isaacs told USA TODAY.
That’s where citizen archivists come in. Their transcriptions make every word of the document searchable.
“It unlocks history, and then it’s available to the world,” Isaacs said. The program started in 2016.
Archivists use software that picks up images of text, called optical character recognition, but humans are still better at parsing old documents.
“We have so many different kinds of records,” Isaacs said. “They’re odd sizes, they’re folded, they’re torn, ink bleeds through. Some are handwritten and gorgeous, and some are handwritten and it looks like chicken scratch. So we find that humans are just better, at this point, at being able to decipher what’s said.”
Isaacs said the catalog holds 270 million digitized files, a fraction of the 15 billion items held by the the National Archives. “We’re ramping up and getting more and more things in the catalog all the time,” she said.
By 2026, the catalog is on track to hold half a billion files – which means more volunteers will be needed. Those interested should visit the citizen archivist page on NARA’s website, Isaacs said.
A peek behind the curtain of the past
Smith has transcribed more than 100,000 pages of files across hundreds of years of history. In 2017, he was given NARA’s Citizen Archivist award.
Smith savors the peek behind the curtain of history he gets from the files, which range from safety guidelines sent to soldiers during the 1918 influenza epidemic to bankruptcy records of “Buffalo Bill” Cody. “I learned it cost a dollar a night to stable a camel,” he said of the latter.
Sometimes, the documents reveal unexpected connections. When transcribing insurance claims for the Titanic, he came across a transcript of an interview with Capt. William Thomas Turner, one of a set of interviews with other sea captains meant to prove that the doomed ocean liner violated safety norms.
“We understand you have to finish this today because you’re sailing tomorrow,” the interviewers asked, according to the document Smith transcribed. “What ship are you captaining?” Turner said, “The Lusitania.”
“It was indeed the trip in which it was sunk, and the poor man had been saying things like, ‘Well, I don’t really know how long it would take under normal circumstances to lower a lifeboat.’ And I thought, well, you’ve got to find out in a few days,” Smith said.
Smith has been amazed by the hidden angles of major historical events that the documents illuminate. “I hadn’t known much about the immediate aftermath of WWII, and there are fascinating documents on the displaced persons who were trying to get out of Switzerland, or China, wherever it was,” Smith said. “Their stories are made very vivid. It’s wrenching.”
Some documents humanize historical figures. One described President Harry S. Truman giving up on an idea after one of his closest aides, the secretary of state and his wife opposed it. “That’s it. I can’t compete with all of you,” Truman said.
That Harpo Marx telegram to Kennedy? It was in a batch congratulating Kennedy on his presidential nomination, and said, “Do you need a harp player in your cabinet?”
Smith has come across other humorous tidbits, like one from the court testimony of Kathryn Kelly, the wife of “Machine Gun” Kelly, the Prohibition-era gangster. Asked why she bought her husband the machine gun, she said, “Well, I thought he was dangerous, but I didn’t think he was going to be dangerous with the machine gun.”
‘You never know what you’re going to find’
Citizen archivists can work on the missions from anywhere – all they need is a computer. “We only ask for a page at a time,” Isaacs said.
The flexibility is a factor that attracted Smith to the program. “It’s entirely in your hands. You can do it at any time of day or night,” he said. “I’ve had insomnia periodically and thought, fine, I’m going to go in and transcribe.”
Although citizen archivists pick their own documents, the options can seem overwhelming. “We create missions, which are topical subject areas, or very specific records about maybe a holiday or a celebration or a historic event,” Isaacs said. Missions now available include World War II oral histories, the Chinese Exclusion Era and UFOs.
The catalog recently announced a new mission in collaboration with the National Park Service ahead of America’s 250th birthday to transcribe the pension files of Revolutionary War soldiers. “Something you transcribe could be used in an interpretation tour by a park ranger at a battlefield,” Isaacs said.
Smith has participated in the missions, but he also enjoys coming across topics that pique his interest, or even searching for random keywords. “I enjoy just tossing a word in the search engine at random, something that doesn’t have an obvious tie, like bakery or emerald or whatever comes to mind,” he said.
“You never know what you’re going to find,” he said. “It just really is very fulfilling, and I’ve learned a lot.”