Transcribathons Romania & The Netherlands

During Spring 2017 two national Transcribathons have been held: from 20 – 25 March in Romania and from 15 – 27 July in the Netherlands.

The Romanian Transcribathon took place in four different cities: Bucharest, Brasov, Sibiu and Cluj. In just one week not only all volumes of the special Nistor diaries but all Romanian content was transcribed – in total over 1 million characters. The overall winners of Transcribathon Romania are the four members of Team Cluj 6 A big thank you to all 66 participants of the 23 teams and the great organisers and hosts of the four libraries. More information about the winners in the various cities, all runners-up and the end results can be found on the campaign page.

Recueil de chansons de Léon Frédéric Boulin – Europeana 1914-1918 / Médiathèque municipale Jean Jaurès de Nevers CC-BY-SA

From 3pm on Monday 15 May 2017, transcribers in the Netherlands were invited to join the Transcribathon Netherlands online competition. The leading runners were invited to the award ceremony at 3pm Saturday 27 May 2017 at Huis Doorn, the former home to the German Emperor Wilhelm II during his exile after the war. The overall winner was Carola Jansen from Rotterdam, who transcribed more than 100 documents, Check out the specially-selected documents and get full details about results and the winner here.

Featured run on Transcribathon: Fighting World War One with Words and Metaphors

On the the occasion of this year’s World Poetry Day (21 March), we have selected a large number of poetic manuscripts from all over Europe. From hastily scribbled rhymes about funny situations to complete series of sonnets pondering the very large questions of life, these texts approach identity, innocence, guilt, loyalty, courage, compassion, humanity, duty, desire, and death. Some deal with immediate personal experience, others with moments of national and international crisis.

You can still help disclose these personal expressions of human consciousness and conscience. Just follow this link and submerge yourself in worlds full of awe, dread, wonder, marvel, sorrow, and joy.

Participants and their prizes

The Europeana Transcribathon Campus Berlin 2017

Last June, the Europeana Transcribathon Campus took place at the State Library in Berlin. An innovative crowdsourcing event, it gathered people from across Europe who helped enriching the Europeana 1914-1918 digital archive.

The event consisted of two main moments. It kicked off on Thursday 22 June afternoon with a Transcribathon. Over two days, teams from three generations (the youngest participant was 15, the oldest 83), from Germany, Romania,UK, France, Italy, Belgium, Austria and even Syria, competed with each other in digitally transcribing as many World War One documents as possible, and in linking them to other historical sources, such as early 20th century newspapers. Friday 23 June there were workshops & information sharing sessions in which a diverse and passionate audience shared their thoughts and experiences about transcription, data enrichment and linking of various historical sources.  A short report can be found here [link to blog]. All results can be found here.