Crowdsourcing the cursive: UPEI turns to social media to decipher old postcards

Librarians at the University of Prince Edward Island's Robertson Library are getting some help from the public via social media to decipher the cramped swirls and loops of cursive handwriting on vintage postcards.

Project librarian Mark Cousins and digital initiatives librarian Meghan Landry have been working on a project to make the vintage postcards more accessible to historians and genealogists but needed some assistance.

Landry said they first used the library's Twitter account and the hashtag #transcribetuesday to try and get some help. When that didn't work, they turned to reddit and finally Facebook.

Historic PEI agreed to post pictures of 35 postcards Cousins was unable to decipher on its Facebook site in hopes others would be able to figure out what was written on them.

Postings successful

So far, Landry said the postings have been a success with a minimum of 20 comments being made.

The 35 postcards were among 1,700 collected by the PEI Museum and Heritage Foundation. Landry said UPEI was asked to get involved to help scan both sides for digitization.

"They knew we had the means to do this," she said. "When I started my position back in February I was given the task of doing something with these postcards."

Landry said the pictures of the postcards were "just kind of sitting on the web" with nothing really being done with them as it appeared they weren't easily discoverable in searches.

Difficult to transcribe

Cousins was tasked with transcribing any messages on the back of the postcards.

"It was difficult at times because people's handwriting is a bit tricky to decipher. There was about 400 I had to go through and transcribe which was very time consuming."

But Cousins also found it interesting to read the messages, especially a number of them sent to the same person. He added most of the postcards dated from 1900 to 1945 and some in the 60s and 70s.

"Of the 400 that had transcriptions, there were 35 that I just couldn't get so that's where the social media aspect of this project came into being."

To see the cards — and to take a crack at reading them — go to Historic PEI on Facebook.

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