Digital History

One of my favorite ways to procrastinate is on the National Archives Citizen Archivist Dashboard. They have endless digital collections that they need help going through. You can tag photos, edit and contribute certain articles, or add pictures of your own. They also have a newly launched transcription page.

This is a great new tool to help speed up the never-ending process of digitization. My favorite are the tagging missions. The pictures are very interesting and include everything from World War II propaganda posters to written correspondence. There is also the Documerica project from the EPA and Flickr collections that include photos of all types from across the nation. Tagging is a good way to learn about how the internet works and search optimization which can make things so much easier to find.

And sometimes, when in the right mood, it can be strangely addicting, so those of you that have Pinterest or have managed to avoid it this long, try tagging instead, that fake wedding you’re planning isn’t going to be quite as instantly gratifying as helping the future search for their history.