Special Mission to the National Archives

A couple of years ago the National Archives & Record Administration (NARA) created the Citizen Archivist project. This program seeks to enlist people to transcribe archival documents into a digital format. These "missions, as NARA calls them range across all sorts of fascinating topic areas. The latest tasks include speeches by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, records of the U.S. Forest Service, World War I photo captions, and many more.

Home Page for the Project

A list of current Citizen Archivist Missions

For today's blog posting I chose "Franklin D. Roosevelt Master Speech Files."  The task at hand is to transcribe to digital format all the speeches in the folder, from 1898 through 1945 (the year he died).

First page menu of FDR speeches

I chose to review the Fireside Chat #19 (part 3) from February 23, 1942.

The FDR Fireside Chat page, showing all the thumbnails

The beginning of the speech

To get started with your mission go here. And good luck!