A community archive: agreement is a check, not a guarantee
1A community archive invited volunteers to read handwritten letters and enter the dates and place names into a searchable catalogue. A short tutorial allowed people without historical training to join. To discourage copying, the archive showed each volunteer a letter without revealing anyone else’s entry. A record was provisionally accepted when two independent entries agreed. If they differed, an editor compared both entries with the original image. The aim was to make disagreements visible, not to reward the person who typed fastest.
2During a trial, the volunteers completed more records than the archive’s small staff could have completed alone. The organisers nevertheless warned that matching entries did not guarantee accuracy. Two people might misread the same damaged letter in the same way. They therefore kept the original images available and asked editors to inspect a sample of the matching records as well. Speed made the collection more accessible; comparison with the evidence made its claims more defensible. Neither benefit should be mistaken for the other.
3Some volunteers suggested that an unfamiliar place name proved the existence of a forgotten village. The editors treated this as a possible explanation, not a confirmed discovery. An abbreviation, a spelling variation, or a damaged line could also explain the entry. They asked volunteers to identify what the letter actually showed and to avoid turning an interesting guess into a public fact. The catalogue could support new historical questions precisely because it preserved a way to check—and, when necessary, revise—its entries.