By Rose Caisley '26
During Love Data Week, William & Mary Libraries will participate in Douglass Day hosted by the Center for Black Digital Research at Penn State and the Library of Congress to celebrate Douglass Day on February 14th. Founded by teacher and civil rights activist Mary Church Terrell in 1897, Douglass Day commemorates the life of Fredrick Douglass, who chose the 14th as his birthday. Over a hundred years later, in 2017, a group from the University of Delaware helped revive the celebration of his birthday. Since then, people across the country have used the day to come together and transcribe historical documents related to Black History. It seemed to be fate that Love Data Week fell on the same week as Douglass Day. This year, W&M Libraries will use the transcribe-a-thon as an opportunity to participate in Douglass Day.
Last year’s Love Data Week also featured a transcribe-a-thon. "We actually focused on one of our current faculty scholars in the library, Jennifer Putzi, and the research that she's doing on black women's diaries," Instruction & Research Librarian Rachel Hogan said. “Since it's Love Data Week again, we decided to just participate in Douglass Day this year.”
The event begins at 11:30am with lunch. After lunch, works by Douglass will be read aloud. Then, participants focus on transcribing materials from the Library of Congress.
The collection being transcribed this year is the Library on Congress’s African American Perspectives. “Tons of different authors, including Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Barnett, Benjamin W. Arnett, Booker T. Washington, and many, many more,” will be featured, Hogan said. “There are some sermons on racial pride and political activism, some annual reports from different organizations, course catalogs, and graduation materials from different HBCUs. There are biographies, slave narrative speeches, legal documents, poetry, kind of everything.” Even with all the participating institutions it is unlikely that everything in the collection will be transcribed on Friday. “The goal is to definitely bring awareness to this collection.”
The transcribe-a-thon is taking place in the Dulin Learning Center in Swem Library from 11:30am to 3:00pm on Friday, February 14th. No transcribing experience is required, so don’t be shy! Come participate in this commemorative community event.