Computer-Assisted Crowd Transcription of the U.S. Census with Personalized Assignments for Better Accuracy and Participation.

Our Open Genealogy Data census transcription project is intended to make valuable census data more readily available to researchers, digital libraries, and others. We use automatic handwriting recognition to bootstrap our census database, facilitating searches even in the early stages of the project while manual transcription is underway. We provide a web-based interface for crowd-sourced transcription of the census to complete and correct the database. In an effort to improve both volunteer participation and transcription accuracy, we provide default transcription assignments based on transcribers' own genealogical family lines or geographical locations to improve the likelihood that the transcribers will be familiar with the names and places in their assignments.