The Filson’s NEH-funded First American West project uses the
power of its members and supporters to provide greater access to its early
Kentucky collections than ever before. Large-scale volunteer transcription,
“crowdsourcing,” is an exciting way for students, researchers, and learners of
all ages to participate in archival and historical work. Join the Filson’s
Patrick Lewis and our partners at FromThePage, Sara Brumfield and Ben
Brumfield, to discuss the Filson’s crowdsourcing effort and the successes and
challenges of other FromThePage projects. This program is presented through the
generous support of the National Endowment for the Humanities and its
Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan initiative.
Sara Brumfield is a software engineer and entrepreneur. She
co-founded FromThePage, a crowdsourced transcription platform that allows
institutions to share documents for transcription. Prior to founding
FromThePage, she spent 17 years as a software engineer with IBM, inventing or
co-inventing eight patents. She has a BA in Computer Science and the
Study of Women and Gender from Rice University.
Ben Brumfield is a partner at Brumfield Labs, a software
consultancy specializing in crowdsourcing and digital editions. In 2005,
he began developing one of the first web-based manuscript transcription
systems. Released as the open-source tool FromThePage, it has since been
used by libraries, museums, and universities to transcribe literary drafts,
military diaries, herpetology field notes, and punk rock fanzines. He has
written and presented on crowdsourced manuscript transcription for over a
decade. He received a B.A. in Computer Science and Linguistics from
Rice University.
Patrick A. Lewis is the Director of Collections and Research
at the Filson Historical Society.