Reach for the Ropes: Tag You’re In.

What a week! I apologize on being a day late on posting this, but I’ve got some exciting news to share! (At the end of the post).

First things first, the link on the page appears to be partially broken taking you to the archives.gov page. Once I created an account, it was a little daunting at first, looking at posters and such and questioning every single tag idea that came through my brain before I remembered I’m there to make the viewers life easier. Truthfully I had a little trouble finding items I felt comfortable tagging, but it got a little easier when I found a few items relating to Weir Farm that had no tags associated with them.

While entertaining, they did not provide a large amount of instruction on what to do or what exactly they were looking for. Signing up for an account certainly would help diminish the risks of trolls or people messing with items. While I’m sure a determined person could always create a new email with name, the amount of effort and energy expended to go through with that would seem to be not worth the effort. It also allows them to track down the trolling to a single source and revert any damage done from a single account much easier.

Transcribing is a bit easier, and certainly something I find oddly relaxing. I have found I can read a number of poor penmanship, and while my skills aren’t quite unrivaled I’ve found I can decipher most chicken scratch that gets sent my way.

All in all it’s a pretty great activity, allowing citizens and fledgling historians to get into the nitty gritty and help out with digitization and digital history efficiently and effectively! I’m very impressed with the website as a whole, and hope to continue to use it!

On a side note, I’ve been asked by the Ridgefield Historical Society to help run their website and contribute a post every once in a while. I’m likely to say yes, and the said it ran on WordPress, which I have a little bit of experience using from this blog! This week ties in pretty well with this opportunity, so I’m rather excited with how things are turning out!