The Citizen Archivist project is an online open-contribution project that aims to digitize the entirety of the records in the National Archives. It’s entirely volunteer-based, contains many impossible-to-read PDFs, has an… okay web interface, and is absolutely fascinating.
After a quick tutorial, I decided I wanted to quickly do a silly page before investigating some of the set-up categories. And to the marvel of someone (certainly not myself, how dare you suggest that), the first page I worked on was transcribing the content of a UFO sighting report.
First off: there are official government forms that have to be filled out when you see a UFO? Why have I not heard of this before??
Second, it’s actually amazing how much you’re able to learn by reading through records. Whether it be letters between the President and First Lady (the transcriptions for the letters between John and Abigail Adams had already been made) or an official complaint regarding a minor inaccuracy in the family tree of the town’s mayor, the contents of the National Archives are fascinating.
If you’re interested, you can learn more here: https://www.archives.gov/citizen-archivist (I promise I’m not a government shill)