Are you interested in learning more about local history, or want to help the library better serve our local researchers? Consider becoming a Citizen Researcher or a Citizen Archivist! This is a way that you can help support the preservation of Worcester County history, without even leaving your house!
Why Transcriptions?
One of the best ways that you can help us is by helping transcribe documents from our Archival Collections. Many items in our collections are posted online, and can be viewed and searched through our CatalogIt page. However, when searching, the database is only able to search what is written in the file accompanying each document, meaning our staff needs to input any information that we want researchers to be able to search by. While computers can use OCR (Optical Character Reader) technology to read printed text, it still needs to be reviewed by a person, as they aren't 100% accurate. Cursive or other handwritten documents are much harder if not impossible for computers to read, leading to organizations like the National Archives call reading cursive a superpower! In addition to making it easier for the computer and researchers to search for words and topics included in documents, transcribing allows our documents to be more easily accessible to those who are blind, visually impaired, or otherwise unable to read a specific document.
Getting Started and Picking a Document
If you are interested in transcribing documents, visit our CatalogIt page and select a document. Once you have checked that it has not already been transcribed, you can begin the transcription process.
Some of the most crucial documents for us to transcribe are our handwritten documents, but if you are not able to read them easily, we appreciate transcriptions of typed documents, newspaper articles, yearbooks, or any other document in our collection! Some collections with many handwritten documents are our Somerset County Land Records (WR 133), Worcester County Homemakers Clubs Records (WR 66), and Herbert Bounds Papers (WR 5) collections. We recommend picking a collection that sounds interesting, so you will want to keep reading it!
Transcription Practices and Tips
Write down in a Word document the exact text that you see in the document. This includes any misspellings, abbreviations, weird punctuation, or other errors included in the text. For a transcription of a document, we want to have the exact record of what the document says. If you notice any errors such as a misspelled name, please make a note of it at the end of your document or in your email, so we can make sure that it will appear in search results for the correct spelling as well.
Don't try too hard to match the formatting, as it may not transfer over properly once copied. If the formatting seems important for the understanding of the document, include a note in the transcription, for example [crossed out] after a sentence that is crossed out may change the meaning of what is written. If a word has been hyphenated to connect across a line or page, but is not a hyphenated word, please type as one word without the hyphen.
If you are not able to read a word or a section, please feel free to leave ____, [illegible], or [???] to mark the sections you can't read, and fill out what you can, any bit helps! If a letter is tripping you up, try looking for similar looking letters or words elsewhere in the document to help you decipher it.
Need help transcribing? Check out some of these articles with tips and suggestions!
Once you have completed your transcription, save the document in a Word or PDF file format, and email it to history@worcesterlibrary.org. Please make sure to include the title or ID number of the document you have transcribed so we can identify it! Please include your name in your email or document so we can give credit to our transcribers in the item description. If you would like to remain anonymous, please let us know.
An example below shows where to find the document title and ID number on our CatalogIt pages.
Any Bit Helps!
If you start a transcription, but run in to trouble identifying some words, or only have time to do a few pages in a longer document, don't get discouraged! We appreciate any assistance we can receive from volunteers. Feel free to leave sections blank, submit partial transcriptions, or take your time working on a document.
Why Photo Identification?
The Worcester County Library is grateful to have a collection of over 3,000 photographs depicting life in Worcester County, MD and the surrounding areas. Many of these photos have labels and identification accompanying them, but others have been lost to time. These photos may be very useful to researchers, showing people, places, or events that they are trying to find information on, but are unable to search for since they aren't labelled properly!
Getting Started and Picking Photographs
Many of the library's photographs are shared online on our Flickr page. Here, our photos are divided into albums, primarily based on the Archival Collection they are part of, or their location. Photos in the same Archival Collection were donated by the same person or organization, and thus may be of the same time period, locations, topics, or people, though that is not always the case.
To get started, it can be good to look through the albums and see if there are any topics or locations you are most familiar with, or interested in looking through. For example, a frequent library user during the 70s-90s might be good at identifying people in Worcester County Library Slides, a long time Berlin resident might recognize places in our Berlin, Md Slides album, or a Worcester County Public Schools graduate from 1960-1986 might see some old classmates in WR 84: American Field Service Clubs collection. Some of our most recent photos, and photos of a broad range of topics can be found in WR 122: Stewart Dobson Photo Collection, which consists of photographs taken by OC Today photographer Stewart Dobson. The photographs range from the 1990s to early 2000s and cover local life such as fishing tournaments, construction projects, and local parades.
An assortment of unidentified photos have also been compiled into an album titled ID Help Needed - People. This includes photos from all collections, sorted by approximate year, which can let you browse a number of collections at a time.
Identification Process and Sharing
While going through photographs, open up a Word document on your computer, or get a sheet of paper out. If you recognize any people, places, events, important items, or other things in the photograph that is not identified in the description or title on Flickr, write it down! Please write down the title or number associated with the photo next to the description, so it can be easily matched up and added to. Below is an example of where to find the title and accession number associated with a specific photograph.
Please share any information that you think could be important for understanding or locating the photograph. While people's names are some of the most requested, the name of a building, a tool someone is using, or an activity that is being done could be important to a researcher. If you can identify a person, try to give us a little bit of information about them, if you know it. For example, knowing their profession, their maiden name, or approximate age at the time of the photograph could help us know more about the story behind the picture.
Don't be discouraged if you can't identify every person in a photograph, or only know about one or two pictures. Any additional information on any of our photographs is information that we did not have before, and details that can be incredibly helpful!
Once you have finished looking at pictures, and have information that you want to share, you can email any digital documents in the form of a Word Document or PDF to history@worcesterlibrary.org. If you took notes on paper, you may mail it to
Worcester County Library
c/o Local History Librarian
307 North Washington Street
Snow Hill, Maryland 21863
Or drop it off at any Worcester County Library branch in an envelope labelled Worcester County Library - Local History Librarian.
Please provide your name with your document to be credited for your assistance. If you would like to remain anonymous, please note that as well.