World Archives Project

We are excited to announce the new international version of the World Archives Project keying tool!  Many of you likely noticed that we launched a new version of the program last week.  We made the update in order to include new language versions of the tool.  Anyone can now key records with the tool in 4 additional languages: German, Swedish, Italian, and French.  We also have a Spanish version that we are completing (but may still show some text in English).

In addition to having the keying tool in multiple languages, we are excited to announce the addition of 4 new non-English keying projects: Historic Postcards – France (French), Historic Postcards – Italy (Italian), Historic Postcards – Sweden (Swedish) and the Lübeck Marriage Banns (German)!  Each project has the field names and field help text available in both the language of the project and in English.

If you would like to change the language of the tool or of the field helps you will need to change your settings.  Just go to the File menu and click on Options and you will find the language preference settings there.  After choosing your language preference you will need to restart the program for the changes to take effect.

You can easily identify projects in another language because the project name will be listed in the language of the project, followed by an English translation.  Keying projects in another language adds a new element of difficulty to keying records, so before deciding to work on one of these projects we suggest that you visit the Project Page for the project to get a better idea of what to expect.  You can easily reach the Project Page either by clicking the project name when you are on your World Archives Project Dashboard  page on the site or by clicking the “See Example” link for a project in the keying tool when evaluating the list of image sets available for download.

The historic postcard collections are fascinating.  You can view the front and back of the postcards and, although we are only keying the type-written captions on each side, if you run into a “used” postcard it is fun to read what is written by the sender.  Because the Lübeck Marriage Banns are handwritten in German this project is not recommended for those who don’t speak German. 

Please feel free to share your feedback regarding these changes and additions to the World Archives Project by emailing us at worldarchivesproject at tgn.com.

If you are interested, you can read the World Archives Project press release in the UK here.  Announcements for the launches in other countries will be coming in the near future.