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By the People Bulletin

Happy New Year and a big thank you from BTP team and Librarian of Congress! 

The By the People team and the Librarian of Congress want to start the New Year by thanking all of our volunteers for their contributions over the six years of the program! The Librarian recorded a special video message for volunteers that you can watch in our most recent blog post. 

In 2024, you finished 7 campaigns, completed over 166,000 pages, and saved more than 622,000 transcriptions. Over 5,000 new volunteers activated user accounts in 2024. Thank you for all you have done to make the Library's collections more accessible for all. We look forward with hope for the year ahead! 

Volunteer Office Hours: January 30

Our next virtual volunteer office hours session is only two weeks away on Thursday, January 30 from 3-4pm EDT! Register to receive a Zoom link so you don't miss out. These sessions are for brand new and experienced volunteers alike. Community Managers will be on hand to provide quick updates and then to take your questions and ideas. Bring your questions, cool finds, and community spirit! 

Douglass Day: February 14 

Join thousands of virtual volunteers from around the country to transcribe Library of Congress collections in honor of Douglass Day 2025! Douglass Day is a day of service to digital Black history held each year on Frederick Douglass' chosen birthday of February 14. By the People is excited to collaborate with the Douglass Day team and volunteers this year to transcribe selections from Library collections in an all-day virtual celebration. This year’s theme is "you make history" and explores the history of African-American librarianship, collecting, and who decides what is remembered and preserved. Register to receive updates from the organizers and a Zoom link to the virtual program

Whitman & Bernstein transcriptions available for search on loc.gov 

You can now search and use transcriptions in the Thomas Biggs Harned and the Charles E. Feinberg collections of Walt Whitman's papers. A big thanks to all of the volunteers who worked on the Whitman campaign since it launched in 2019!

Historian Barbara Bair, who curates the Whitman collections for the Manuscript Division at the Library, expresses her thanks: "Profuse thanks to all who brought these collections in the Whitman campaign to this point. Much of this handwritten and heavily revised material is very hard to render and discern, and having the accompanying texts available raises the bar so much higher for our patrons and researchers and students in easing their ability to approach and understand the materials. I am so appreciative of all the work of the full team to make this possible, and the volunteers and reviewers."

Transcriptions from the Leonard Bernstein collection are also now available on the Library's website. Thanks to volunteers who contributed to this campaign! Explore these transcriptions to learn more about the life and work of the Maestro.  

Warm wishes,

Abby, Carlyn, and Lauren