AAPB Launches Transcribe to Digitize Challenge with George Blood!

Earlier this year, the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) launched FIX IT+, a crowdsourcing tool that invites the public to help improve the searchability of over 50,000 hours of historic public television and radio programming. Now, with the generous support of George Blood, a digitization service provider, the AAPB is launching the Transcribe to Digitize Challenge.  The challenge is simple: George Blood will digitize another tape (for free!) for every transcript that is corrected.

So now, public media fans – visit fixitplus.americanarchive.org, filter content by YOUR station, and #transcribetodigitize!

AAPB has digitized and preserved more than 50,000 hours of public television and radio programming created by stations and producers across the United States. This unique historic material, created as early as the 1940s and often lacking closed captioning, represents our shared and diverse cultural heritage. Yet it is not highly discoverable to researchers, educators, students, lifelong learners, journalists and the public because it lacks robust descriptive information, or “metadata.”.

With funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the AAPB has made strides at making the collection more discoverable by creating speech-to-text transcripts of the audio and video in the collection. These transcripts can be used to improve accessibility of the collection through the addition of new keywords and by exposing the time-stamped transcript alongside the media player on the AAPB website. However, these computer-generated transcripts lack accuracy, and the AAPB is seeking the help of the public to correct them!

Transcribe to Digitize Challenge Details

For the Transcribe to Digitize Challenge, a minimum of 20 transcripts must be corrected for a station to meet the challenge, and George Blood will then provide free digitization for 20 tapes selected by that station. Up to 100 transcripts can be corrected for 100 tapes to be digitized per station. The digitized materials will be delivered back to each station, and a copy will also go to the AAPB for long-term preservation at the Library of Congress and access through the AAPB website!

To help your station reach its goal, visit fixitplus.americanarchive.org and start transcribing!

May the challenge begin!

If your organization is a participant in AAPB and wants to opt in, email Casey Davis Kaufman at casey_davis-kaufman@wgbh.org.