What can I do in my spare time to benefit society?
February 2, 2025 9:33 AM Subscribe
I recently heard an interesting radio story about citizen archivists. These are volunteers who transcribe historical documents into searchable electronic texts, tag and describe images, review and verify transcripts made by others, and otherwise make contributions to the historical record. I'm really interested in doing something like this. Does anyone have experience with this project, or something in the same general area?
Something else that's somewhat similar is the BOINC project (BOINC stands for "Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing") that lets you donate your computer's unused processing power to help scientific research projects, like the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) or climate modeling. This type of initiative is less interesting to me because it's fairly passive.
I'm looking for beneficial projects that I can do at home, in my spare time, at my own pace. I'm not interested in anything political, like letter-writing campaigns, organizing protests, or anything of that nature. Science and history are my main interests, but I'd consider other domains as well.
I'd be particularly interested in hearing first-hand reports from MeFites who have worked on something like this.
(I just realized that there's a similar AskMeFi question from about seven years ago, but I'm wondering if there are new projects available now.)
Something else that's somewhat similar is the BOINC project (BOINC stands for "Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing") that lets you donate your computer's unused processing power to help scientific research projects, like the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) or climate modeling. This type of initiative is less interesting to me because it's fairly passive.
I'm looking for beneficial projects that I can do at home, in my spare time, at my own pace. I'm not interested in anything political, like letter-writing campaigns, organizing protests, or anything of that nature. Science and history are my main interests, but I'd consider other domains as well.
I'd be particularly interested in hearing first-hand reports from MeFites who have worked on something like this.
(I just realized that there's a similar AskMeFi question from about seven years ago, but I'm wondering if there are new projects available now.)
On a quick look, I don't see any of these words in the post or linked article or old post, which are helpful when searching for this sort of thing:
public science
citizen science
crowdsourcing (LOC site)
I encounter fewer people starting new projects these days (I am an academic research librarian). That's due partly to concerns about sustainability of new efforts, partly to a variety of information and economic justice issues, partly due to pragmatic concerns about what to do with the results of these projects. Should results of these project be made available for sale or free, who hosts them how, what's the process for file transfer as systems age, etc. That's not to say there aren't new projects, but I think some people are slower to spin up new efforts than they used to be, having now experienced the challenges of dealing with the end state of projects and learning that they can't just sit on a shelf somewhere and remain accessible, usable, uncorrupted, etc., without preservation work.
posted by cupcakeninja at 10:30 AM on February 2 [2 favorites]
public science
citizen science
crowdsourcing (LOC site)
I encounter fewer people starting new projects these days (I am an academic research librarian). That's due partly to concerns about sustainability of new efforts, partly to a variety of information and economic justice issues, partly due to pragmatic concerns about what to do with the results of these projects. Should results of these project be made available for sale or free, who hosts them how, what's the process for file transfer as systems age, etc. That's not to say there aren't new projects, but I think some people are slower to spin up new efforts than they used to be, having now experienced the challenges of dealing with the end state of projects and learning that they can't just sit on a shelf somewhere and remain accessible, usable, uncorrupted, etc., without preservation work.
posted by cupcakeninja at 10:30 AM on February 2 [2 favorites]
Distributed Proofreading still provides books to Project Gutenberg and through them to many. Their principles (often in tension) are to represent the original text as accurately as possible in the most widely accessible format, so it’s potentially a good place for an archivist/historian to weigh in. I haven’t been there for yonks but the discussions assumed that both sides were valuable and in good faith.
Can range from incredibly fiddly work setting tables of historical numbers, through recognizing that the OCR did not recognize a second language, to “smooth reading” which can flag inconsistencies over the context of the whole document.
posted by clew at 10:50 AM on February 2 [3 favorites]
Can range from incredibly fiddly work setting tables of historical numbers, through recognizing that the OCR did not recognize a second language, to “smooth reading” which can flag inconsistencies over the context of the whole document.
posted by clew at 10:50 AM on February 2 [3 favorites]
Anti-Slavery Manuscripts from Boston Public Library, where you can transcribe correspondence and verify the transcriptions of other volunteers of a 40,000 document collection of the writings of 19th century abolitionists. I did this briefly and it was absorbing and easy to get started.
posted by lizard music at 11:35 AM on February 2 [4 favorites]
posted by lizard music at 11:35 AM on February 2 [4 favorites]
You could take up birding and log the birds you see on eBird. They use their bird data to promote research and conservation. You can count birds in your backyard and around your neighborhood.
posted by somedaycatlady at 12:32 PM on February 2 [1 favorite]
posted by somedaycatlady at 12:32 PM on February 2 [1 favorite]
You can contribute to FindaGrave in various ways.
posted by gudrun at 1:13 PM on February 2 [2 favorites]
posted by gudrun at 1:13 PM on February 2 [2 favorites]
I assume you can't code since you didn't mention it, but open source software is definitely a rich universe of opportunities for people with those skills.
Also consider:
Standard Ebooks
Crisis Text Line
posted by potrzebie at 1:42 PM on February 2
Also consider:
Standard Ebooks
Crisis Text Line
posted by potrzebie at 1:42 PM on February 2
National Archives (federal USA) wants Citizen Archivists who are good at reading handwriting.
posted by Jesse the K at 2:13 PM on February 2 [2 favorites]
posted by Jesse the K at 2:13 PM on February 2 [2 favorites]
Speaking about the personal experience bit, several years ago I volunteered to help transcribe some Courts of Chancery records for the National Archives. The records dated back to the late 17th to early 18th century. I hasten to add, I didn't get to see the originals, but effectively a photocopy of a copy of them, made by hand in the early 20th century. Confusing. Basically, as I recall some enthusiastic researchers decided to start copying out the Courts of Chancery records into a notebook, in what was probably beautiful penmanship in reality. I was sent batches of photocopies of these records and was asked to type them into a spreadsheet with the intention being to digitize them.
I did this at home on our old PC, pretty much at my own pace and under the stewardship of one of the curators of the project at the National Archives. Once I'd finished a set of records, I'd send them back via email and a few days later would receive the next batch in the post.
The photocopies were of varying quality, to put it mildly. There were some that were quite legible and a lot where you had to effectively guess at the shapes of the letters, so poor were the images. However, it was fascinating to try and piece names, dates, places and archaic legal terms together - it was pretty much a word jigsaw, and I think I got pretty good at it by the end. Also, the various levels of the landed gentry (and the sheer numbers of them) who got sued was fascinating.
On preview - exactly what Jess the K seems to be referring to (although the link isn't opening for me to check).
Edited to add - yes, very similar project.
posted by Martha My Dear Prudence at 2:19 PM on February 2 [1 favorite]
I did this at home on our old PC, pretty much at my own pace and under the stewardship of one of the curators of the project at the National Archives. Once I'd finished a set of records, I'd send them back via email and a few days later would receive the next batch in the post.
The photocopies were of varying quality, to put it mildly. There were some that were quite legible and a lot where you had to effectively guess at the shapes of the letters, so poor were the images. However, it was fascinating to try and piece names, dates, places and archaic legal terms together - it was pretty much a word jigsaw, and I think I got pretty good at it by the end. Also, the various levels of the landed gentry (and the sheer numbers of them) who got sued was fascinating.
On preview - exactly what Jess the K seems to be referring to (although the link isn't opening for me to check).
Edited to add - yes, very similar project.
posted by Martha My Dear Prudence at 2:19 PM on February 2 [1 favorite]
I've done quite a lot of historical documents transcribing and I enjoy it. I'm pretty good at deciphering old handwriting, gained a lot of experience in that in my PhD research. The most intriguing thing I transcribed was a seventeenth century woman's cookbook. Probably the most heart-wrenching were several petitions from recently emancipated enslaved people in Virginia from the late 1700s. The law said that if they were freed they had to leave the state. The petitions begged for permission to stay close to enslaved family members.
For the last couple of years I've been part of a small group that transcribes and annotates various US Censuses for our county in upstate NY. This is a program run by our local history museum. We meet every other Saturday for a couple of hours and it's fun.
Sometimes when I transcribed remotely and rather anonymously I got frustrated that I could not annotate, provide links to, for instance, entries in the Oxford English Dictionary that helped me understand that ancient cookbook.
When I was working as a college librarian I used to list my transcribing as a professional community service in my annual reports.
If you do decide to transcribe feel free to get in touch with me.
posted by mareli at 3:31 PM on February 2 [2 favorites]
For the last couple of years I've been part of a small group that transcribes and annotates various US Censuses for our county in upstate NY. This is a program run by our local history museum. We meet every other Saturday for a couple of hours and it's fun.
Sometimes when I transcribed remotely and rather anonymously I got frustrated that I could not annotate, provide links to, for instance, entries in the Oxford English Dictionary that helped me understand that ancient cookbook.
When I was working as a college librarian I used to list my transcribing as a professional community service in my annual reports.
If you do decide to transcribe feel free to get in touch with me.
posted by mareli at 3:31 PM on February 2 [2 favorites]
I have participated multiple times in a project with the DC public library to tag digital newspaper archives with metadata. They do this with a few newspapers; I worked on the Washington Blade.
posted by wicked_sassy at 6:43 PM on February 2 [3 favorites]
posted by wicked_sassy at 6:43 PM on February 2 [3 favorites]
Trove is the National Library of Australia's portal to lots of digitised Australian content from all over the country. It includes newspapers, magazines, books and increasingly more and more digitised content. You can sign up for a free account and help correct text, to make things more findable. It is instantly rewarding as you can see the OCR gobbledygook turn into nicely readable text as soon as you save your corrections. You can also add tags and notes.
I was in the habit of picking a reasonably random word to search for and then correct whatever articles came up. Works best if you get something that has different potential contexts, like "table" which could be an item of furniture, but you also get mathematical tables, shipping tables, table talk (eg gossip), table tennis, tablespoons, table an issue in politics, etc etc.
posted by Athanassiel at 6:44 PM on February 2 [4 favorites]
I was in the habit of picking a reasonably random word to search for and then correct whatever articles came up. Works best if you get something that has different potential contexts, like "table" which could be an item of furniture, but you also get mathematical tables, shipping tables, table talk (eg gossip), table tennis, tablespoons, table an issue in politics, etc etc.
posted by Athanassiel at 6:44 PM on February 2 [4 favorites]
These are great. I get an email from Zooniverse with a new project at least every two weeks, so if you want a steady stream of new projects, get on their mailing list
posted by advicepig at 6:53 PM on February 2
posted by advicepig at 6:53 PM on February 2
Slightly different sensory skill is required for the Thích Nhất Hạnh Talks TNHT project, which started 3 years ago to capture the words of the Master. Volunteers get a rough transcript & a video file and are requested&required to capture the words, and the voice - and not fuss too much about a) the proper names of people and places b) foreign-to-you words because they have Effectives for that.
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:23 AM on February 3
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:23 AM on February 3
Check out ArchiveTeam! Similar to BOINC as you mentioned, you can download a client called the ArchiveTeam Warrior which runs in a virtual machine on your computer and helps archive websites for inclusion in the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Our latest project is archiving US government websites before they implode due to the current regime, but there's usually a handful of projects to choose from at any time for websites that are shutting down or at risk.
posted by reptile at 12:11 PM on February 3
posted by reptile at 12:11 PM on February 3
Mod note: [Thank you for asking this, alex1965, and thank you to all who are answering! We've added it to the sidebar and Best Of blog!]
posted by taz (staff) at 2:35 AM on February 4
posted by taz (staff) at 2:35 AM on February 4
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Another one I learned about recently is WikiShootMe, which lets you look at a map and see places near you that don't have photos on their wikipedia pages. Unfortunately the locations near me are mostly a sea of auto-generated posts from the Cebuano-language wikipedia (I do not live in a Cebuano-speaking place) so some sifting through is necessary, and the interface is kind of confusing and buggy (and you have to sign up to use it) but I recently was able to upload a photo of a minor landmark near me that didn't have one before.
posted by mskyle at 9:50 AM on February 2 [4 favorites]