Platform downtime scheduled on Wednesday November 20.
The Zooniverse platform will be offline for scheduled maintenance on Wednesday, November 20 from 4pm-10pm US Central Standard Time (2024-11-20 22:00 UTC to 2024-11-21 4:00 UTC). During this period, all projects and platform services will be inaccessible. We apologize for the inconvenience; this maintenance is necessary to make updates to platform infrastructure and improve long-term reliability and uptime. Please visit status.zooniverse.org for updates before and during the downtime period. For any additional questions, please email contact@zooniverse.org.
Finished! Looks like this project is out of data at the moment!
Help us transcribe the stories of American life in Pennsylvania during the Civil War.
Learn moreYou can do real research by clicking to get started here!
Zooniverse Talk
Chat with the research team and other volunteers!
People's Contest Digital Archive Statistics
View more statsKeep track of the progress you and your fellow volunteers have made on this project.
Every click counts! Join People's Contest Digital Archive's community to complete this project and help researchers produce important results. Click "View more stats" to see even more stats.
Percent completeBy the numbers
Message from the researcher
"This is essentially a people's contest. On the side of the Union it is a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men…"
People's Contest Digital ArchiveAbout People's Contest Digital Archive
The People's Contest Digital Archive collects the experiences of Americans living in Pennsylvania during the era of the American Civil War. It promotes research and understanding of the ways in which people of different backgrounds went about their lives during the mid-19th century. Providing transcriptions of the diaries and journals in the People's Contest helps us to broaden access to the materials and contribute to our understanding of life during the Civil War era.
By helping to transcribe the diaries and journals, you will be helping us to provide access to these collections, to promote the institutions who contributed them to the project, and to help with teaching, research, and engagement around 19th-century American history. You will also be helping to build educational opportunities around the use of archival and special collections.
The People's Contest is a collaborative project of the University Libraries and the George and Ann Richards Civil War Center at Penn State University. The project website features a unique statewide bibliographic database of hidden collections, digitized manuscripts, and contextual essays.