Urgent appeal issued to anyone who can read this writing
If you can read this particular type of handwriting, you might want to give The National Archives a shout, as they're appealing for volunteers for help.
Over 200 years worth of US documents are in desperate need of transcribing at the organisation, and while it seems like a fairly straightforward task - especially in an era of Artificial Intelligence (AI) increasingly doing the legwork for us - it's not that simple.
Many of the documents date back to the 1700s, meaning they were written in cursive - a style of writing which only certain people have the skill to crack. Even AI hasn't got a knack for it (yet).
“Reading cursive is a superpower,” Suzanne Isaacs, a community manager with the National Archives Catalog in Washington, DC, told USA Today.
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History unlocked
The increasingly waning skill is the key to understanding the documents in the team's catalog and unlocking lost pieces of history, including the likes of Revolutionary War pension records, historic Census documents, immigration papers and even field notes from British astronomer Charles Mason.
Suzanne's team currently have around 5,000 Citizen Archivists which help the Archive interpret and transcribe the millions of items in its catalog, but she's hoping for more to come on board.
“There's no application,” she explained. “You just pick a record that hasn't been done and read the instructions. It's easy to do for a half hour a day or a week.”
Reading cursive: a dying skill
Back in the day, kids were taught the skill and even graded on it, but when state of the art tech at the time in the form of typewriters emerged, and later the computer, handwriting was seen as less and less important.
In fact, by 2010, regulators across the pond began focusing on keyboard skills, and now cursive is a dying skill among the population.
While some schools still teach it, it's rare that anyone would actually use it outside of the classroom, and we all know how quickly skills we don't practice can slip through our fingers.
To be fair, when was the last time you actually needed to write anything physically down? I even signed my tenancy agreement online.
AI to the rescue? Not so fast
Of course, you might be thinking that AI can surely be trained to fill in the gaps, but that might not be the case... at least, not for a while.
AI has started to be able to read some cursive, but it's still requiring input from humans to do the final edit.
“There’s usually some mistakes,” Nancy Sullivan from The National Archives admitted. “So we call it ‘extracted text’ and our volunteers have to look it over and compare it to the original.”
This means that the document is only considered officially transcribed once a volunteer has looked it over. Plus, not all of the documents are in good nick - some are smudged, ripped or dog-eared due to their age, and AI can have a bit of a hard time figuring it all out.
Have we finally found something that AI can't do?!
Anyway, if you reckon you have the 'superpower' to help these guys out, you can sign up to volunteer here. And even if you can't currently read cursive, the team says you can learn on the job.
“It helps – but it’s not necessary," Suzanne says.
Chloe Jackson