"Sometimes I hesitate when people ask what I'm doing with my retirement because I don't want to seem nerdy," said Mr. Cantor, who lives in Jerusalem.
In an epic effort to turn the reams of archival material at Washington's Smithsonian Institution into digitally searchable files, museum officials have turned to the crowd: They've created a new Transcription Center that allows any interested person to sift through scanned, handwritten documents and submit their own transcriptions online. On the center's site, which officially launched last month, people like Mr. Cantor can click on a photocopy of a document, zoom in, decipher its sentences and send in their typed transcription with a click.
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