Women's History Month Projects

This morning, I dropped off my Art Project for Women's History Month - it is called PENNANTS. It is 8 pennants with portraits, cameo style, of famous and successful modern women like Opra Winfrey, Kamala Harris and others. It will be on exhibition tomorrow at Haddon Fornightly for the Annual Through A Woman's Eyes Art Show that is held in cooperation with a high school group called the 50 - 50 Club. Last year I won the prize for "most on theme Art Piece" but I don't do the work to win, I do it to celebrate Women's Accomplishments and it always make me learn something new. In my e-mail today, the National Women's Hisory Project invited everyone to participate in this event, which I thought was wonderful, although I can't participate because my eyesight has become so poor from the Fuch's Dystrophy (a chronic degenerative disease of the cornea). Back when my eyesight was good, however, I transcriped the typed version of Ann Cooper Whitall's Diary, housed at the Gloucester County Historical Society Library. The original is held at Swarthmore in the Quaker Collection. I was grateful to the kind person who transcribed the script version to the typed version, for sure. So here is the notice for the Clara Barton transcription event. By the way, what will you do for Women's History Month? You could do something simple like watch a movie! Or you could even think about our mother's lives compared to ours! Happy March Women's History Month!

This Women’s History Month, join us to transcribe Clara Barton’s papers held at the Library of Congress! Help unlock the past, one word at a time, by delving into the archives! This virtual, free event is open throughout the month of March to anyone who wants to be a part of an essential, crowdsourced public history project! How much you transcribe is up to you. Try it once or join every day—every little bit counts!

Transcribing historical documents is the process of taking (generally) handwritten documents and putting them into plain text. Transcription improves the searchability, readability, and accessibility of historical documents for people who use screen readers or other assistive technology. It also makes them searchable by keyword and easier to read. The Library of Congress’ By The People project supports the transcription of documents in their archives.

This March, the National Women’s History Museum encourages you to help transcribe Clara Barton’s papers! Nurse, educator, philanthropist, lecturer, and founder of the American Red Cross, Clara Barton (1821-1912), kept diaries throughout her life. We need your help to make her writings more accessible and, by extension, more widely known!