Campaigns
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Civil War Justice: The Correspondence of Joseph Holt, Judge Advocate General
Experience many of the most important issues and events of the Civil War era through the correspondence of Joseph Holt (1807-1894) while he served as a newspaper editor, lawyer, and political figure in Kentucky, and United States postmaster general, secretary of war, and judge advocate general of the United States Army (1862-1875). The sectional crisis, the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, and Reconstruction are all played out in Holt’s papers, as his proximity to power prompted letters from well-known figures, the public, and his own divided family.
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Organizing for Women’s Suffrage: The NAWSA Records
Help complete this campaign by the end of August for our summer 2022 challenge! All of the pages have been transcribed but we still need volunteers to review transcriptions for accuracy and completeness.
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In the 1890s, the National American Woman Suffrage Association’s influence reached across the country, contributing to suffrage victories in the western states. By the early twentieth century, new leaders, including Carrie Chapman Catt and Anna Howard Shaw, emerged and suffragists devised innovative tactics in the struggle for the right to vote, including suffrage parades and open-air meetings. Discover NAWSA's multifaceted history, including deep connections to the abolition and women's rights movements. -
Woman of the World: Political Thinker Hannah Arendt
Political theorist and cultural critic Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) fled from her native Germany and occupied France and came to the United States as a Jewish refugee from the Nazi regime. She made a life as a New Yorker and became one of the world’s most prominent public intellectuals. Letters and notes in her papers document the personal side of Arendt as a wife and family member, a friend, mentor, and colleague. Correspondence, syllabi, speeches, research materials, and writings convey the public Arendt, a brilliant writer, teacher, activist, and thinker who interacted with a who’s who of fellow literati and intellectuals of her time. The woman who offered deep analysis of human nature, political systems, power and rights to her students and readers left us lasting works including Eichmann in Jerusalem, The Origins of Totalitarianism, and The Life of the Mind.
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Herencia: Centuries of Spanish Legal Documents
Legal documents shed light on what societies and individuals value, and the struggles, hopes, and triumphs of people across the societal spectrum. You can transcribe documents written in Spanish, Latin, and Catalan between 1300 and 1800, and open the legal history of Spain and Spanish colonies to greater discovery. Help us bring this rare collection to life!
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Los documentos jurídicos iluminan lo que la sociedades e individuos valoran y las batallas, esperanzas y triunfos de personas a través de todo el espectro social. Puedes transcribir documentos escritos en español, latín y catalán desde los años 1300 a los 1800 y dar entrada a la historia jurídica de España y de sus colonias para mayor descubrimiento. Ayúdanos a traer a la luz esta colección de materiales únicos. -
Rough Rider to Bull Moose: Letters to Theodore Roosevelt
President Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) was a prolific writer of books, articles, and especially letters, and received as much mail as he sent. His correspondents ranged from heads of states to average Americans, and covered a wide range of topics. Discover what Roosevelt and his correspondents had to say about the issues of their day, and help make the subjects addressed in what Roosevelt called his “great mass of papers” more accessible.
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Walt Whitman
2019 marked the 200th anniversary of Walt Whitman's birth and the poet remains at the center of cultural conversations today. The Whitman campaign includes projects devoted to his poetry, letters, speeches, and other writings. Discover how he wrote and lived for yourself, and learn more about his creative process.
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Volunteer transcriptions now enable discovery and access for the Feinberg-Whitman collection and the Miscellaneous Manuscripts collection. Search them. -
American Creativity: Early Copyright Title Pages
Discover endlessly fascinating items in this time capsule of title pages. Sent in by authors and publishers to register their books and other works, they stem from the earliest U.S. copyright laws from 1790 to 1870. This collection is a unique American record of creativity, dreams and aspirations.
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By Design: Frederick Law Olmsted & Associates
2022 marks the bicentennial of Frederick Law Olmsted’s birth. Many of the parks, estates, residential communities, campuses, grounds of buildings, and gathering places he, his associates, and his successors designed remain in use today. Find out more about landscape architecture, urban planning, and the cultural history of design for public and private greenspaces by transcribing documents from the Library’s Manuscript Division holdings.
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Clara Barton: "Angel of the Battlefield"
Nurse, educator, philanthropist, lecturer, and founder of the American Red Cross, Clara Barton (1821-1912) was one of the most prolific, active, and beloved women of her time. Discover how she achieved so much despite widespread prejudice against women.
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Volunteer transcriptions now enable search and access for portions of this collection at loc.gov. -
The Blackwells: An Extraordinary Family
Discover the extraordinary history of one family’s commitment to social reform movements such as abolition, women’s suffrage, and temperance. Blackwell family members include Lucy Stone and her daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell, who were both prominent in the women’s rights and women’s suffrage movements.
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These papers are part of the “Suffrage: Women Fight for the Vote” topical campaign, which brings together stories from people on the front lines of the largest reform movement in American history. Explore the long struggle for equality through the diaries, letters, and speeches of the men and women who fought for the right to vote and changed political history 100 years ago. -
Brothers in Arms: The Gladstone Afro-American Military Collection
Launched February 1, 2022 and completed March 27, 2022.
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Volunteer transcriptions now enable discovery and access for this collection. Search them.
The William A. Gladstone Afro-American Military Collection (ca. 500 items) spans the years 1773 to 1987, with the bulk of the material dating from the Civil War period, 1861-1865. This collection documents African Americans in military service, especially the United States Corps d'Afrique and the United States Colored Troops, which were organized during the Civil War. Explore American military history through the lens of African American participants. -
Ordinary Lives in George Washington’s Papers
Launched June 30, 2020 and latest addition completed March 17, 2022.
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George Washington’s papers are about more than George Washington. Because the first president was a dedicated record-keeper, his papers are also a source of information about the people with whom he lived, worked, and did business. We began investigating the ordinary lives in Washington’s papers with two projects, now completed: Revolutionary War Receipts, 1776-1780 and Interrogations of British Deserters, 1782-1783. Now we are adding a third: the farm reports sent weekly to Washington by his farm managers at Mount Vernon after the war. These record the weather, show Washington engaging with the latest agricultural innovations of his time, and document the lives and labor of the enslaved people at Mount Vernon. -
Theater for the People: Federal Theatre Project playbills
Launched January 11, 2022 and completed March 11, 2022.
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Between 1935 and 1939, the Federal Theatre Project employed thousands of performers, directors, playwrights, designers, and stage technicians to produce hundreds of productions across the country during the Great Depression. At no other time in United States history has the government so directly supported the creation of live performance. These playbills of Federal Theatre Project productions document the stories we told in the 1930s, what we valued then, and who we were. -
Artistic Trio: Georgia O’Keeffe & Alfred Stieglitz letters to Henwar Rodakiewicz
Launched March 8, 2022 and completed March 10, 2022.
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Between 1929 and 1947, painter Georgia O’Keeffe and her husband, the photographer and art impresario Alfred Stieglitz, each corresponded separately to their mutual friend, the filmmaker Henwar Rodakiewicz. This campaign offers insight into their trio of talent and a chance to engage closely with O’Keeffe’s beautiful calligraphy and expressiveness as a writer. Letters reveal her private thoughts about her art, her self-doubts, challenges, and friendships, and her increasing love of the Southwest landscape and the beauty of the natural world, as Rodakiewicz establishes his career in film and Stieglitz runs his famed An American Place art gallery in New York. -
Women’s Suffrage in Sheet Music
Launched February 16, 2021 and completed February 23, 2021.
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Historic sheet music offers a unique lens through which to explore the women’s suffrage movement. See both “pro-” and “anti-” suffrage sentiments and arguments folded into popular music of the day and discover songbooks published for group singing at suffrage meetings and rallies. Transcribing lyrics reminds us of the power of the suffragist voice, as well as the threat of her detractors. -
Seers, Spiritualists, and the Spirit World: The experiments of Frederick Hockley
Launched October 26, 2020 and completed September 6, 2021.
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British Spiritualist, accountant, and Freemason, Frederick Hockley (1808-1885) is often credited with being a leading influencer of the nineteenth-century Occult Revival, though very little is actually known about him. These 11 notebooks, tucked away in Harry Houdini’s Library, and thought by many to be lost to history, describe the results of Hockley’s numerous experiments in reaching the beyond. -
At the Library and in the Field: John and Alan Lomax Papers
Launched July 13, 2021 and completed September 3, 2021.
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Volunteer transcriptions now enable discovery and access for this collection. Search them.
John A. Lomax, Sr., and his son Alan Lomax became stewards of a nascent Archive of American Folk-Song in September 1933. Their tenure lasted until Alan separated from the Library of Congress in October 1942. During that period, they administered an archive that grew in scope and volume. The resultant manuscript material—correspondence, memoranda, reports, notes, and writings—was decades later collated into the John A. Lomax and Alan Lomax papers (AFC 1933/001), the focus of this digital collection. -
Mary Church Terrell: Advocate for African Americans and Women
Launched October 24, 2018 and completed August 10, 2021.
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Volunteer transcriptions now enable discovery and access for this collection. Search them.
Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954) educator, women's rights advocate, and civil rights activist, was the founding president of the National Association of Colored Women and, in 1909, a founder of the NAACP. Her papers are part of the “Suffrage: Women Fight for the Vote” topical campaign, which brings together stories from women on the front lines of the largest reform movement in American history. Transcribing these pages will allow you to explore the long struggle for equality through the diaries, letters, and speeches of the women who fought for the right to vote and changed political history 100 years ago. -
Anna E. Dickinson Papers
Launched June 3, 2019 and completed July 23, 2021.
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Anna Elizabeth Dickinson (1842-1932) was a lecturer, reformer, actress, and author. She was a teenage phenomenon on the antislavery lecture circuit, and her electrifying speeches made her one of the most sought-after speakers of the women’s suffrage campaign. Her papers are part of the “Suffrage: Women Fight for the Vote” topical campaign, which brings together stories from women on the front lines of the largest reform movement in American history. Transcribing these pages will allow you to explore the long struggle for equality through the diaries, letters, and speeches of the women who fought for the right to vote and changed political history 100 years ago. -
Historical Legal Reports from the Law Library of Congress
Launched April 28, 2021 and completed July 14, 2021.
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Volunteer transcriptions now enable discovery and access for this collection. Search them.
Calling all students of history, government, law, public policy, international relations, and other interested members of the public – help us expand access to hundreds of previously unreleased legal reports and other publications from the Law Library of Congress dating back to the 1940s!
Many of these newly available reports have been digitized from thin, carbon copies that have not been found in any other printed format. These often represent the only known remaining versions of the reports. Although they are still quite legible, the poor print quality makes their digitized characters difficult for optical character recognition. Help us to provide accurate transcriptions of these original documents and ensure full-text search. -
James A. Garfield Diary: “His Confidential Friend”
Launched March 1, 2021 and completed May 12, 2021.
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Volunteer transcriptions now enable discovery and access for this collection. Search them.
Although an assassin’s bullet shortened his presidential administration to just six months in 1881, James A. Garfield (1831-1881) left an impressive archive of his forty-nine years, including these twenty-one diaries (1848-1881). Garfield used his diary to record the challenges he faced as a self-made man, his activities, intellectual curiosity, accomplishments and defeats, family life, travels, and comments on the people, events, and society of his time. Garfield’s diary provides a sustained and intimate view into the rich inner life of one of America’s more remarkable, but lesser-known presidents. -
The Man Who Recorded the World: On the Road with Alan Lomax
Launched September 4, 2019 and completed January 15, 2021.
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Volunteer transcriptions now enable discovery and access for this collection. Search them.
Discover rich folk traditions from America and the Caribbean by transcribing the notebooks and letters of folklorist Alan Lomax and his collaborators. Lomax had a knack for finding the best performers and coaxing them to record epic stories and songs, many of which are still sung and performed today. These documents serve as the bedrock of our understanding of twentieth-century American and Caribbean folk music. -
Letters to Lincoln
Launched October 24, 2018 and completed July 9, 2020.
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Volunteer transcriptions now enable discovery and access for this collection. Search them.
Abraham Lincoln led a busy life as a laborer, politician, lawyer, father, husband, and the first Republican President. Find out what occupied his mind by transcribing papers sent to him by friends, family, fellow lawyers and politicians, allies and adversaries, as well as his diverse constituents. Most of Lincoln's own papers have been transcribed, but these letters to him have not. Help us get a more complete picture of his life and times. -
Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers
Launched June 4, 2019 and completed June 15, 2020.
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Volunteer transcriptions now enable discovery and access for this collection. Search them. Or download as a dataset.
Like her close collaborator Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906), Elizabeth Cady Stanton is one of the best-known women in American history, principally because of her role in the women's suffrage campaign in the nineteenth century. Although most often identified as a suffragist, Stanton also advocated for women's emancipation and equality in many arenas—political, economic, religious, and social. Transcribing these pages will allow you to explore the long struggle for equality through the diaries, letters, and speeches of the women who fought for the right to vote and changed political history 100 years ago. -
Susan B. Anthony Papers
Launched June 3, 2019 and completed May 11, 2020.
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Volunteer transcriptions now enable discovery and access for this collection. Search them. Or download as a dataset.
With the possible exception of her close collaborator Elizabeth Cady Stanton, no woman is more associated with the campaign for women's voting rights than Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906). Her name became so synonymous with suffrage that the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was called “the Anthony Amendment” for many years by its supporters. Transcribing these pages will allow you to explore the long struggle for equality through the diaries, letters, and speeches of the women who fought for the right to vote and changed political history 100 years ago. -
Civil War Soldiers: "Disabled but not disheartened"
Launched October 24, 2018 and completed April 14, 2020.
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Volunteer transcriptions now enable discovery and access for this collection. Search them. Or download as a dataset.
William Oland Bourne (1819-1901) was a reformer, poet, editor, and clergyman who organized left-hand penmanship competitions for Union soldiers who had lost their right arms during the Civil War. -
Carrie Chapman Catt Papers
Launched June 3, 2019 and completed April 25, 2020.
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Volunteer transcriptions now enable discovery and access for this collection. Search them. Or download as a dataset.
The papers of suffragist, political strategist, and pacifist Carrie Lane Chapman Catt (1859-1947) reflect her steadfast dedication to two major ideals--the rights of women, particularly the right to vote, and world peace. Catt served as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) from 1900 to 1904, during which time she helped found the International Woman Suffrage Association, and for a second term beginning in 1915. Transcribing these pages will allow you to explore the long struggle for equality through the diaries, letters, and speeches of the women who fought for the right to vote and changed political history 100 years ago. -
Rosa Parks: In Her Own Words
Launched February 4, 2020 and completed March 21, 2020.
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Volunteer transcriptions now enable discovery and access for this collection. Search them. Or download as a dataset.
Rosa Parks is best known for one courageous act on one extraordinary day: she refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger on December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama. This decision launched the Montgomery Bus Boycott and a new phase of the civil rights movement. But it wasn’t the first time she stood up for herself and others, and it wasn’t the last. Hers was a life of activism and service. Help make her words and life accessible to future generations by transcribing letters, writings, and event programs and flyers from the Rosa Parks Papers. -
"This Hell-upon-earth of a Prison": Samuel J. Gibson's Andersonville Diary
Launched November 6, 2019 and completed November 14, 2019.
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Volunteer transcriptions now enable discovery and access for this collection. Search them. Or download as a dataset.
Union soldier Samuel J. Gibson (1833-1878) was a prisoner of war at the notorious Andersonville Prison following his capture by Confederate soldiers in 1864. He survived his eight-month ordeal in the prison camp he described as “this Hell-upon-Earth” and documented his experience in a diary and a letter to his wife. -
Branch Rickey: Changing the Game
Launched October 24, 2018 and completed February 22, 2019.
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Volunteer transcriptions now enable discovery and access for this collection. Search them. Or download as a dataset.
Branch Rickey (1881-1965) helped break the color line in Major League Baseball by recruiting Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Explore his scouting reports, which document Rickey's skill in analyzing a player's game.