Volunteer Opportunity if You Can Read Cursive Handwriting

In 2010, the US government removed cursive writing from the requirements of the K-12 Common Core Standards. Although over half of US states are returning to that requirement, many of today’s young people can’t read cursive handwriting. That’s a shame because many historically important documents are written in cursive.

The Newberry Library in Chicago has a collection of handwritten documents in cursive that it is trying to have transcribed. Volunteers have already transcribed their Civil War records, but that is only a small part of their collection. The US National Archives has a similar problem.

Do you remember the Palmer Method green strip with white cursive letters that hung above the chalkboard in your elementary school classrooms?  If so, here’s a volunteer opportunity for you. You can help the Newberry Library or the US National Archives decipher their documents written in cursive. This will make their digital archives much more accessible. You may even discover something important to our nation’s history.

To transcribe for the Newberry: https://nt.newberry.org/

To become a citizen archivist for the National Archives: https://www.archives.gov/citizen-archivist