What is Douglass Day?
Douglass Day is an annual program that marks the birth of Frederick Douglass. Each year, thousands of people gather to help create new & freely available resources for learning about Black history. The project frequently focuses on important Black women’s archives, such as Anna Julia Cooper (2020), Mary Church Terrell (2021), and Mary Ann Shadd Cary (2023). Learn more about the history of Douglass Day.
This year, the transcribe-a-thon will bring together participants at more than one hundred simultaneous events around the world. Students, teachers, and community members will help to transcribe a collection of digitized papers left by Frederick Douglass. These papers have been made available through collaborations with the Library of Congress and the ByThePeople platform.
What is a transcribe-a-thon?
A transcribe-a-thon is an event in which people gather in person or online to work simultaneously on a crowdsourcing project to transcribe historical documents.
This year, as mentioned above, we will be transcribing Frederick Douglass materials via a platform called ByThePeople from the Library of Congress. No experience is needed. The platform is very beginner friendly!
How do I participate?
Everyone can participate! If you'd like to take part in the library's transcribe-a-thon in person, come to the Rose Library on February 14th from 1:00-3:00. If you can't make it in person, pull up a computer, turn on the Internet, and follow the instructions below!
- Review the Quick Start Guide and follow the instructions. You can also find additional transcription resources here.
- Enjoy! Transcribing is a fun, interactive way to learn, whether you work alone and interact mainly with the documents you transcribe, or you get together with others and treat transcribing as more social and collaborative work.