New Search Feature: Optical Character Recognition (OCR)

This post is from the September 5th issue of the National Archives Catalog Newsletter. With more than 92 million pages of digitized records available to search in the National Archives Catalog, we are always working on ways to improve search results to better help you find what you’re looking for. That’s why we’re excited to … Continue reading New Search Feature: Optical Character Recognition (OCR)

Transcriptions Reveal Life in the Trenches

If you are familiar with our Citizen Archivist program, you know that we encourage online volunteers to transcribe digitized historical records held in the National Archives Catalog. We often say that these transcriptions help unlock history by improving search results, readability, and access to historical records. So how exactly are your contributions unlocking history? A … Continue reading Transcriptions Reveal Life in the Trenches

Help Contribute by Scanning U.S. Coast Guard Records from the Vietnam War in the Innovation Hub!

Today's post comes from Jessica Soden, National Archives Technician & former Innovation Hub Coordinator Detailee During my time as the Innovation Hub Coordinator detailee, the National Archives added deck logs from United States Coast Guard cutter vessels (USCGC) involved in the Vietnam War (RG 26, Entry 330; NAID 559642) to the list of records that … Continue reading Help Contribute by Scanning U.S. Coast Guard Records from the Vietnam War in the Innovation Hub!

Why do we engage Citizen Archivists?

Today's post comes from Pamela Wright, National Archives Chief Innovation Officer. Earlier this week we posted an invitation to help transcribe records in our holdings and it has sparked some thoughtful conversations about the role of crowdsourcing at the National Archives. For this specific crowdsourcing campaign we featured several “missions” that we wanted citizen archivists … Continue reading Why do we engage Citizen Archivists?

National Park Service Turns 100

Summer is here and we hope your plans include visiting one or more of the 411 national parks, monuments, battlefields, military parks, historical parks, historic sites, lakeshores, seashores, recreation areas, scenic rivers and trails in the National Park System.  If you can’t make it to one of the locations found in every state, the District of … Continue reading National Park Service Turns 100