German Heritage in Letters wins prize from the National Genealogical Society

The National Genealogical Society's award is part of the “SLAM! Idea Showcase,” an event recognizing libraries, archives, and other institutions which have developed opportunities for citizen-scholars to conduct and contribute to genealogical research and can serve as models for other organizations. German Heritage in Letters, which is supported by the Wunderbar Together initiative of the German Federal Foreign Office, is a project to find, gather, and share online letters sent to and by immigrants from the German-speaking lands to the United States. The project relies heavily on the contributions of family historians in the United States who share their correspondence and original research as well as volunteer citizen-scientists in both the United States and Germany who transcribe the correspondence from 19th-century Kurrentschrift handwriting into machine-readable and -searchable text. The project has already gathered more than 2,000 letters and is continuing to collect more letters and welcome new volunteers. “German Heritage in Letters” can be found online at www.germanletters.org.