About By the People

The By the People crowdsourced transcription program invites volunteers to transcribe and review digital collections from the Library of Congress. Everyone is welcome to participate! Volunteer-created transcriptions are returned to loc.gov, the Library’s main website, where they improve search, readability, and access to historical documents.

Watch our introductory video below and sign up for our newsletter to stay in touch. Then learn how to get started and join in!

Volunteer accomplishments

As of 5/11/2025

We've released over 1,162,499 pages for transcription across 47 Campaigns.
975,539 of those pages have completed transcriptions.
129,781 pages need a reviewer to check them for completeness and accuracy.
652,000 completed transcriptions have been integrated back into digital collections, making them word-searchable and readable by accessibility technologies.
There are 28 cataloged, full-text datasets of completed Campaigns now available online.
48,304 volunteers have registered accounts.

Recent blog posts

January 10, 2025 - Celebrating Six Years of By the People

December 20, 2024 - Volunteer Vignette: History is a Living Thing

October 24, 2024 - Transcribe Theodore Roosevelt’s Papers Online at the Library of Congress

June 3, 2024 - Pride Month: Transcribe Walt Whitman

May 23, 2024 - Volunteer Transcribers Needed for Centuries of Spanish Legal Documents

April 11, 2024 - A New Resource to Explore Library of Congress Transcription Datasets

Visit the Library's Signal blog to read more from the By the People team

Publications

International Journal of Digital Humanities, October 23, 2024, Giving back, learning, relaxing, and having fun: personal motivations and impacts of a virtual volunteer transcription program.

Journal of Open Humanities Data, February 4, 2022, By the People Crowdsourcing Datasets from the Library of Congress.

Code4Lib Journal, November 5, 2019, 'With One Heart': Agile approaches for developing Concordia and crowdsourcing at the Library of Congress.

Archival Outlook, September 2019, "And the Crowd Goes Wild!” Crowdsourcing Baseball History at the Library of Congress.

Contact and press information

Want to get in touch? Please review our frequently asked questions (FAQs) and visit our getting started guide. Additional questions can be sent to us via Ask A Librarian.

Press inquiries? Connect with the Library of Congress Office of Communications via [email protected] and include “By the People transcription” in the subject line.

Check out some of our press coverage to read what others are saying:

The Mankato Free Press, March 22, 2024, Chalk one up for those of us who can write in - and read - cursive
NBC News, March 9, 2024, Transcribing our oldest documents for Library of Congress
The Post and Courier, April 4, 2023, Library of Congress crowd-sourcing info about 1865 SC petition for voting rights
Mental Floss, May 14, 2021, The Library of Congress Needs Your Help Transcribing Clara Barton's Diaries, Correspondences, and Other Rarely Seen Papers
Mental Floss, March 8, 2021, The Library of Congress Needs Your Help Transcribing James Garfield’s Diaries
Smithsonian Magazine, December 4, 2020, Library of Congress Seeks Volunteers to Transcribe Letters to Theodore Roosevelt
Mental Floss, December 1, 2020, The Library of Congress Needs Help Transcribing More Than 20,000 Letters Written to Teddy Roosevelt
Federal News Network, August 25, 2020, Library of Congress enlisting volunteers to help transcribe documents
The Washington Post, August 10, 2020, Lincoln’s mail included advice, warnings and a call to shoot deserters
Fox 10 Phoenix, February 6, 2020, ‘By the People’ crowdsourcing project aims to transcribe legendary civil rights leader Rosa Parks’ papers
Mental Floss, July 31, 2019, The Library of Congress Needs Help Transcribing 16,000 Pages of Suffragist Diaries, Letters, and Documents
Smithsonian Magazine, July 30, 2019, The Library of Congress Needs Your Help Transcribing Suffragist Papers
Washington Post Magazine, June 17, 2019, The National Archives has billions of handwritten documents. With cursive skills declining, how will we read them?
Wired, April 14, 2019, Tech that connects us -- And makes us better humans

Program history

The By the People crowdsourced transcription program was launched as a pilot by the LC Labs team on October 24, 2018. Our transcription platform, Concordia, is open source and is proudly developed in-house by the Library of Congress.

Our name comes from the closing line of President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, which states “...government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." It reflects the spirit of democracy of this transcription program, which asks you to join us in enhancing Library of Congress digital collections.