Mount Holyoke College, the selective liberal arts college for women in South Hadley, Massachusetts, is using alumnae and other friends of the college to transcribe letters from the college’s Archives and Special Collections unit so that they can be made available online to researchers and other interested parties.
Leslie Fields, director of Archives and Special Collections at Mount Holyoke, reports that “we have a wonderful collection of letters and diaries from students and alumnae. The idea is to make these documents as accessible and usable as possible. We want all students to have the opportunity to have hands-on experience with the archives.” Fields is a graduate of Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, and holds a master’s degree from New York University. She became director of Archives and Special Collections at Mount Holyoke in 2012.
Mount Holyoke set up a system where interested alumnae can long on to the Mount Holyoke College History Project. After logging in, visitors can choose to view a letter from a list of more than 1,300 documents that have been digitally scanned. A blank field is displayed where the visitor can transcribe the text from the digital scan. Once the letter is completely transcribed, the archives staff reviews the work, closes that particular document from further editing, and makes the transcription available for researchers.