The year 2023 has been a great one for the National Archives Catalog and the Citizen Archivists. Together, we’ve added thousands of transcriptions, tags, and comments to our catalog descriptions increasing their accessibility.
In 2023, 6,164 Citizen Archivists contributed a total of 10,939 comments, 3,110,069 tags (this includes the importation of names transcribed by the public in the 1950 Census), and 339,004 pages of transcriptions to the catalog.
President Harry S. Truman and Brig. Gen. Harry Vaughan arriving at Gatow Airport in Berlin, Germany for the Potsdam Conference, National Archives Identifier 198852
Another interesting series was the papers of the Berlin Conference. Held in the waning days of World War II, the Berlin, or Potsdam, Conference gathered the leaders of the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union in order to determine the post war European borders as well as a unified strategy for the Pacific. Are you interested in contributing transcriptions to these records? We have a few pages left to transcribe and you can help us finish the mission.
In April we launched a set of eleven missions relating to the John F. Kennedy assassination records. Citizen Archivists transcribed these fascinating records in a few short weeks.
Currently there are several active Citizen Archivist missions, all highlighting different records from our collection. Our largest current mission consists of newly released documents relating to UFO’s (as featured in our September newsletter) and World War II Oral Histories (featured in our last newsletter). There’s also a mission made up of correspondence of the director of the Women’s Bureau during World War I.
General George Washington and a Committee of Congress at Valley Forge. Winter 1777-78. Copy of engraving after W. H. Powell, published 1866, National Archives Identifier 532876
Our biggest mission this year was our partnership with the National Parks Service to transcribe all the Revolutionary War pension records. Numbering over 83,000 files, these records tell the stories of America’s earliest veterans. Our goal is to get them all transcribed in time for the country’s 250th birthday in 2026. You can explore some of the stories from transcribed pension files we highlighted in our November 2nd newsletter.
Want to see more of the Citizen Archivist Missions youʼve worked on? Curious about the kinds of missions weʼve done in the last few years? Check out our Mission History page. On this page we list our previous missions so that you can review the records from previous projects. In a few cases, we still need some help completing the transcription or tags, so review the list and help us out.
We want to know about your experience with the Catalog, including suggestions for improvements. Please consider filling out our survey(the link can also be found on https://catalog.archives.gov/).
If you are experiencing an error in the Catalog or have a question about the Citizen Archivist, please do not use this survey. Instead, please contact the Catalog staff at catalog@nara.gov.
History Hub received over 5,500 questions in 2023, accompanied by another 11,000 answers, replies, and comments from other community members! These were some of the top questions across History Hub’s 18 topical communities:
Make History Hub your first stop! You can ask—or answer—questions on History Hub, or see if your question has already been answered! Check out our featured edition for more details, information, and instructions aboutusing History Hub for your research.
